In a world where the everyday business of the political process is increasingly held up to ridicule and held in contempt, political satire can only succeed if it achieves Everest-like heights of absurdity while still managing to strike its targets with unavering true aim.
And so Christopher Buckley succeeds spectacularly with Boomsday, because he has found a plot (and a policy) that on the face of it appears to be utterly ludicrous but holds within it the grains of so many truths, and surrounds it with a cast of characters fit for the theatre of the grotesque, that it becomes easy to suspend reality long enough to begin believing that such an outcome is actually possible.
Buckley confronts head on perhaps the most intractable problem confronting American politicians today: the squazillion dollar (and growing) national debt and the looming social security crisis that will arise in the next decade and a half as 77m Baby Boomers retire on unaffordable benefits.
The "solution", as presented in Boomsday, is a scheme that offers tax breaks to Boomers willing to commit themselves to euthanasia following retirement. The policy, devised by a young DC blogger, Cass Devine, who is outraged at the prospect of having to fund the golfing years of the "most selfish generation", is termed "Voluntary Transitioning", one of the most wonderful euphemisms I have come across in years.
Cass' blog, the aptly-named Cassandra, provokes "Generation Whatever" to take out their anger on the golf courses of south Florida, and soon her platform has her on the front page of Time magazine and attracting attention from all sorts of sources including the White House, the pro-Life lobby, the Vatican and the global media.
But Cass's cause is ultimately picked up by an unpopular and opportunistic senator from the great state of Massachusetts, Randolph K Jepperson ("he's no Jefferson" runs the joke) who is a client of hers in her DC public relations agency, and with whom she has some history. While a soldier serving in Bosnia, Cass was charged to look after Jepperson on a fact-finding tour, during which he comandeered her vehicle to go off in search of food and inadvertantly drove the pair of them into a minefield, causing an explosion that cost the politician part of one of his legs.
Eying the main chance Jepperson stakes a claim for the looming Presidential elections bringing himself into conflict with the White House, which by now includes Cass's estranged dotcom-billionaire father as fundraiser and advisor. Also pitched in at the circus is pro-Life minister Gideon Payne, oleaginous spin doctor Bucky Trumble, and Cass's long-suffering boss Terry, Washington's leading PR advisor to the evil, corrupt and deranged.
The plot and narrative are genuinely hilarious, the characterisation anarchic and thoroughly enjoyable, and the satire bites at its target with the determination and impact of a rottweiler setting about a fillet mignon. But for all that, Buckley also has a beautifully light, witty touch that emphasises Washington's descent into a cynical, selfish, moral cess pool.
It also brings the assurance of the DC insider, which Buckley has as a former aide to the first President Bush (whose own reputation is enhanced each day by the blundering incompetence of his son. Buckley's own opinion on the current administration is scathing and well argued in this op-ed piece in Washington Monthly.)
All in all, Buckley brings the full package to the table. Boomsday is laugh-out-loud, Hiaasen-on-the-Potomac funny, but also hits all its targets - lobbyists, spin doctors, politicians, business people - with unerring accuracy.
A first class example of a difficult art.