MADAME PRESIDENT

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The book outlines key social, environmental and economic justice issues. It talks about how change in the U.S. could be accomplished. It combines elements of Saul Alinsky’s organizing guide Rules for Radicals, and Ecotopia, the ecological utopian novel by Ernest Callenbach.

The book is an alternative historical novel. The close Presidential election in 2004 is decided by the Electoral College rather than the U.S. Supreme Court. Rachel, a single mom and nurse who is active in the movement for universal health care, is the Green’s Vice-Presidential candidate in a disputed Presidential election in 2000. Her candidacy garners unexpected media attention when she helps delivers a baby during a campaign appearance.  However, by winning her home state of Washington, the Greens have enough electoral votes to deny either of the major party candidates a majority of the Presidential electors. A deal is struck making Rachel Vice-President. She assumes the Presidency when the incumbent dies of a heart attack, an attack later found to have been caused by a genetically engineered sex drug taken by his mistress.

A few weeks after becoming President, terrorists fly two planes into the World Trade Center, killing thousands, including her son, who notifies her of the attack shortly after the first plane hits. Rachel gives order to shoot down a third hijacked plane that is headed toward D.C., killing a hundred passengers and crew members. Hijackers in a fourth plane depart the airport once all flights are grounded.

Rather than responding by bombing the poorest country in the world, Rachel insists that the truth about September 11 be uncovered. She pursues bin Laden and the surviving terrorists as criminals. She dares to ask why did September 11 occur and appoints the relatives of the September 11 victims to head the investigation into the attack. She also pushes to create a world Peace Institute as a living memorial at the site of the World Trade Center, and to support a world economic order that reflect the professed values of our American democratic system. Needless to say, her efforts are opposed by the two major parties and their corporate campaign contributors.

The book explores also explores many of the key progressive causes and campaigns in the United States over the last twenty years as Rachel’s develops her organizing skills and political theories, a political Forest Gump. Rachel is initially recruited into organizing by a young African-American community organizer who is fighting against pesticides being sprayed on a poor Mexican-American neighborhood in Phoenix where Rachel is living with her young son. They eventually marry a decade later, moving to Seattle where they play a central role in the beginning stages of the anti-globization movement.

In the interim Rachel lives in the Bay Area where she becomes active in environment, health care, and women’s issue, including developing a long term relationship with Anna, a lesbian activist. Her future husband Wynde meanwhile crisscrosses America in his organizing efforts on apartheid and for Greenpeace. Anna contacts Rachel early in her Presidency when one of her co-workers is involved in a hostage situation in Nigeria involving an American oil company.

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