President Dennis Ward

I've talked about James Reso before.  And I likely will again.  Something I've neglected, though, is James' rival.  President Dennis Ward is the impetus for most of the events of Nos Populus (villains, for lack of a better word, have a tendency to do that in their stories).  In fact, friends who have read the book have asked me more about Ward than they have James.  Most of the questions draw comparisons to George W. Bush and his eight years of misrule.  Short name, authoritarian, moral clarity.  And those comparisons have some merit.

In fact, Ward was named (rather subconsciously) for American University's Ward Circle Building, itself named for the traffic circle bordering the eastern corner of the main campus.  I'll probably never be able to list all the influences--conscious and otherwise--AU had on Nos Populus, but that's one of them.  The authoritarian Republican part is only half true because Ward's not even a true "Republican" during the events of the book.  And authoritarianism is kind of the point of the unapologetic neo-fascist; even ignoring his politics, a live-and-let-live antagonist is a rare thing in fiction.  Much the same can be said for the moral clarity bit.  However, what Ward has isn't so much moral clarity as it is philosophical clarity; the desire for an ideal outcome (think of what Bush wanted in Iraq) versus having the means and ability to achieve an outcome--idealism be damned (think of what Bush got in Iraq). 

Whatever truth those comparisons hold, though, they still don't have enough to compare Ward to Bush.  Working on later drafts (during which time the Bush presidency withered), I realized that Bush would've been a horrible model for Ward.  For one thing, I needed the Ward Administration to be basically competent.  Better still: hyper-competent--a machine so well-oiled that it would make Karl Rove weep for exposing his myriad shortcomings.  The Patriot Act would be a milquetoast accomplishment by Ward's standards, commendable in spirit but woefully mediocre in execution.  Some of this goes back to the clarity Ward brings.  For example, Ward's vice-president, Daniel Pomeroy, has the experience to demand some allusions to Dick Cheney, but instead plays the traditional VP role that Cheney never did.  And why should Pomeroy step to the fore and gum up the works the way Bush's cabinet often could?  Ward projects himself as a clear leader with enough vision to satiate would-be successors.  Until James Reso throws a few wrenches into the works. 

Cliche though it may be, if you're going to write a totalitarian leader you might as well take some plays from the book of Western history's most revered tyrant.  By promising to not only rid the country of its enemies outside and within, but also to eliminate the headaches of democratic government in a scary, modern world, Ward manages to gloss over his less palatable aims that will be hard to justify until after they've already taken hold.  So, with Caesar, I had something of a start. 

But it wasn't until I read Rick Perlstein's fantastic Nixonland that I finally got the last piece of the Ward puzzle.  The willingness--even the need--to exploit partisan rancor and cultural division.  The resigned acquiescence to issues he otherwise didn't care about just so he could further his own goals (in Nixon's case, civil rights as the key to making decisions in foreign affairs; for Ward, social conservatism giving him cover for national security projects).  And the staggering political genius that, in the end, wasn't quite large enough to hide the out-sized paranoia and insecurity that drove his rise to the Oval Office (there was sometimes a temptation to make Ward kind of a cartoon).  The state of the nation as created by Nixon--fractured, anxious, suspicious--is the perfect playground for Ward's own democratic experiments.

It's true that the post-9/11 security apparatuses and the red state-blue state squabbles that resulted were huge inspirations for Nos Populus, but those ingredients don't exist without Nixon's guiding hand.  A president in the Bush-mold would only squander the opportunities that such a political ecosystem presents.  For James Reso's mission to have any meaning or relevance, I needed Dennis Ward to be grounded and identifiable--not as a villain, but as president with his own vision of A More Perfect Union that just so happens to clash with that of our protagonist.