【Action Archives】

An erratic president causes unprecedented chaos in his first two weeks in office. He lashes out at Australia,Action Archives threatens to invade Mexico, imposes an anti-terrorism travel ban that makes terrorism more likely, and shoots off angry missives at the New York Timeswhen he should be coordinating a military raid from the situation room.

That's all Donald Trump. What, did you think I was going to tell you behavior this bad was predicted in a 1986 satirical novel?

Yes, there are plenty of Trumpian echoes in the book in question -- Christopher Buckley's forgotten bestseller, appropriately named The White House Mess. But for the most part, what it shows us is how far below regular satire this presidency has sunk.

SEE ALSO: 'Simpsons' creator: Donald Trump candidacy has gone 'beyond satire'

Buckley's first noveldetails the disastrous one-term presidency of Thomas N. Tucker, an impulsive character known by his initials TNT. President Tucker tends towards self-inflicted wounds. The cover promises "an administration totally off the rails."

Since then, Buckley gave us such critically acclaimed Washington satires as Thank You For Smoking, a hilarious take on how lobbyists poison the D.C. swamp. He has penned comic novels about a senator who proposes killing off Baby Boomers to save on Social Security, a First Lady who killed her husband for philandering, and a Judge Judy-style Supreme Court nominee.

In short, if anyone could have written anything like the story of the wacky and terrifying Trump presidency before it happened, it would be Buckley. The White House Mess is a pretty good shot, probably as close as any author ever got.

But it's got nothing on our self-satirizer-in-chief -- largely because, even in the depths of the Cold War, America just couldn't imagine a president as impulsive and implosive as the one we got in 2017.

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President TNT (1989-93) certainly shares a lot of characteristics with President DJT (2017 to oh God, let it be soon).

Both have a historically low approval rating. Both have an attractive wife (in TNT's case, a former Hollywood starlet) who shuns the White House and decides to live in New York, mysteriously avoiding her First Lady duties.

TNT's Trump-like idea to fight the War on Drugs is to authorize private individuals "to sink or shoot down any ship or airplane carrying drugs into the U.S." The Attorney General is "visibly shaken" by this proposal, though he comforts himself with the fact that "Congress would never go along with such a program." (They don't.)

Then there's TNT's language, which is full of coarse and shadowy threats. See if any of these quotes sound familiar.

On state governors who disagree with his policies: "You've gotta beat these people over the snout. Cut off their highway funds, close their military bases, it's all they understand."

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On talking to the leader of Bermuda, with whom the U.S. ends up in a brief war: "I've bent over backwards for this clown, and every time I've had something unpleasant shoved up my ass."

In response to an antagonistic question, TNT screamed at a reporter to "go soak your head," ordering him out out of the White House. His aides tell him that people are now questioning his sanity. "You have become, Mr. President, the asshole you feared you would," says one.

Ah, but at least he was self-reflective enough to fear becoming an asshole in the first place.

Towards the end of his tenure, struck by delusions of grandeur, TNT starts writing his own speeches. Some of his sentences don't actually end, we're told. Complains one adviser of a planned televised speech: "It wasn't English. It wasn't any known language."

"Sixty million people watching," laments another, "and he was going to stick his dick in his mouth again."

The KKK and Castro

And then, sadly, there are the jarring moments where a 1986 novel teaches us how low we've fallen as a country.

At one point, TNT learns that the Ku Klux Klan is about to endorse his reelection effort. His response is to go out of his way to forcefully attack the Klan in his next speech, because of course you would.

The president normalizes relations with Cuba -- a prediction of a different presidency there -- then actually gives the military base at Guantanamo Bay back to the Castro-led country. (Imagine what a stain it would have taken off America's human rights record if we actually had done that pre-9/11.)

Buckley, a conservative scion who worked for the original George Bush, never once hints that Muslims are a threat. The president's brother, a Billy Carter-type figure, briefly converts to Islam. It's treated as a fad. (Steve Bannon would be taking us to DEFCON 2.)

The wackiest thing Buckley imagined a president could do with regard to Mexico? Give the country 180,000 square miles of territory seized in our 19th century war with the nation. There was no way he could imagine a president threatening to start a 21st century war with Mexico because they refuse to pay for an insane border wall across the Rio Grande.

That would be too ludicrous for a satire, right? Buckley's editor would have protested.

All the diplomacy is so decorous in The White House Mess, even when it's messy. There's a lot of standard-issue Reagan-era belligerence towards the belligerent Russians (imagine that), but with everyone else there's a tight lid kept on all offensive statements, even in private.

The French president "must breathe through his asshole" because he never stops talking, TNT complains in the Oval. An aide instantly frets that "one of these days, you're going to say something like that in public."

Self-control with foreign leaders: what a concept.

Say what you like about the Cold War era, but at least being in competition with another superpower for the affections of pretty much every country in the world kept the U.S. on top of its game.

Now, of course, we nervously await the satirical novels of the Trump era. When the administration is actually off the rails and heading in dark directions, is there anything you can do to make it more wacky? To make us smile?

Good luck making this joke funny, authors.

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