Politicans Can Rumble and Romance, But They Can’t Write

“Dragon Fire” is a cautionary tale for budding politicians and aspiring novelists alike. Former Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen has somehow managed to write a political thriller that purges both politics and thrillers of nearly every redeeming element.

While Cohen claims in an interview with Amazon.com to have written the book to “raise awareness of the kinds of threats that we face in the future,” he succeeds only in raising awareness of how politics, once a method of discourse, has mutated into a language all its own—one that many Americans are unable to speak.

In our Hannitized, 24-hour-news-cycle culture, politics has become less a means of interaction and more an event in itself. Junkies can watch Chris Matthews’ two-hour pre-game show for each presidential debate as though it were the Super Bowl before booting up the computer to play “Fantasy Congress”; turn on the AM radio and you’re likely hear the same senseless, partisan ranting whether listening to sports-talk or news-talk.

The result is an amplification of the process at the expense of the issues. Despite his pretensions at substance, Cohen falls prey to this trap, and while this may thrill those who find the electoral process more thrilling than their 21st birthday, the book is unbearable for the less politically inclined—or at least those more interested in the substance than the process.

There’s a great deal of wisdom buried in here somewhere—we’re given plenty on inefficient Cabinet power struggles, the need for a sensible, moderate foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy over rash action, and even a bit about current anti-American sentiment and the causes of terrorism—but, like far too many of his contemporaries, Cohen becomes bogged down by the process. If bureaucratic meetings warrant pages while Iran and North Korea are diffused in a single paragraph, then there is a serious problem with Cohen’s political priorities.

See if you can follow this: the secretary of defense is killed in a mysterious anthrax attack. Former maverick senator and Vietnam POW Michael Santini is called back to Washington to take his place and play the hero (unsurprisingly, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., gives the book a glowing endorsement). A Russian Mafia boss kills his president and sets his sights on the throne. He colludes with a brainy German gangster and a rogue Chinese general who’s planning a coup and may have tortured Santini in Vietnam. And did I mention the inhumanly beautiful Israeli assassin with whom Santini is romantically involved?

It’s quite remarkable that, even with this much overblown political melodrama, more suspense can be found in a cookbook. Each time the story threatens to become exciting, Cohen is sure to insert a healthy dose of boring.

Geopolitical thrillers tend to begin with short prelude chapters that end in a suspenseful and intriguing death. Cohen follows suit, but ends the chapter by describing the aftermath of a young couple’s assassination in this way: “So the National Park Service concluded that a deranged shooter had picked a target at random…People who used the path were urged to be cautious.” Only a government bureaucrat would consider this gripping.

Or consider the novel’s ostensible climax: Santini must race to China in a supersonic jet-plane in order to halt a misguided preemptive strike on North Korea that could result in World War III. But before he arrives, we’re treated to 30 pages of refueling and bureaucratic bickering.

On the rare occasions that Cohen does move beyond this tedium, the novel feels like something a fifth grader would write. When Santini arrives with his six-pack abs in Tiananmen Square, he kills several soldiers single-handedly, shoots down a helicopter with a handgun, and then proceeds to kick the rogue general in the balls. If this is the way our leaders see the world, is it any wonder that things are such a mess?

While Cohen may not be alone in turning to fiction over fact and discourse over substance, his ineptness is on a level all its own. Say what you want about the Bush administration—at least they can tell a good story.

—Reviewer Patrick R. Chesnut can be reached at pchesnut@fas.harvard.edu.

Dragon Fire
By William S. Cohen
Forge Books
Out Now