Fetch Dark Horse Composed By Fletcher Knebel Presented As Copy

night I didn't get to bed till rather late because I was reading, Now, this used to be commonplace for me, but lately I usually fall asleep after a chapter or two, However, last night I remembered a book I had read way back in High School, and it bugged me a bit because I couldn't remember the author.
The title was Dark Horse, and after searching for a bit I found the author was Fletcher Knebel, I remember being quite impressed with it when I read it, but afteryears the details were kind of fuzzy so I decided to check out the reviews to see what other people thought of it.
I was shocked. The very first review compared the main character to Trump, which didn't fit my memory of the book at all, So I decided to reread it to find out if my younger self had been wrong about the main character,

What I discovered is that he does have a couple of things in common with Trump, He is a speaker who can get a crowd behind him and get people to do things for him, He also focuses his campaign on the blue collar worker, Other than that, he has nothing in common with Trump, He is honest, his policies are radical but make sense, he listens to his advisors and forms his policies with some of their assistance, but adds his own twist.
And all of his policies are aimed at helping the blue collar worker, and are clearly stated in such a way that ALL the current political establishment actively turns on him, because his polices would hit them in the pocketbook.
In other words, he ain't no Trump,

The politics the main character espouses has a lot more to do with AOC and Sanders, Frankly, I think if this man actually existed you could see him as more of a more charismatic, pragmatic version of Sanders, If you have never read Dark Horse by Fletcher Knebel, I highly recommend it, As I read it I saw a lot of parallels to today's problems, Pollution, Climate, overpopulation, corporate greed, And this fiction book was written in! It shows just how little the political system has changed in that NONE of these problems, recognizedyears ago, have been dealt with.
None. The book of course is long out of print, but if you are interested enough to read it you might luck out and find a used copy.
Frankly, I would like to see it come back into print simply because of how relevant it is, Try libraries and interlibrary loan if you are interested but don't want to track down a copy yourself, I read this book in high school and still love it, The best of Knebel's books I have to give Fletcher Knebel astar rating in general, I have now readof his books dating from the's/'s that were so ahead of the time and touched on great political scenarios.
This book, Dark Horse, was fascinating and so relevant when we look at our current environment, Eddie Quinn, the fill in as a presidential candidate, went from hesitant to inspiring, despite several significant hurdles to get through, His candor, transparency and drive for the normal guy are all very attractive qualities that I am looking for in our field of democratic candidates.


I love Fletcher and his prescience, This was the first novel for adults that I ever read, back when I was around, I remember a few titillating sex scenes quite timid by today's standards as well as some thrilling political machinations as a junior congressman becomes a unlikely and unwilling presidential candidate shortly before an election after the incumbent dies suddenly.
It launched a lifetime of reading novels though not many more political thrillers, since I soon discovered science fiction and theater, which took my reading in two other exciting directions.
I recently read another Fletcher Knebel novel and found the period's casual misogyny frustrating but the writing solid and well crafted, The candidate for a major party suddenly dies just weeks before the election, What happens, who do you pick Do they stand a chance with only a few weeks to go before the election Again, a bit dated but a gripping political thriller.
"Dark Horse" by Fletcher Knebel is the story of a New Jersey highway commissioner who unexpectedly finds himself the Republican candidate for President.
The book is intriguing, detailed, and filled with interesting characters, In short, it is the product one comes to expect from Knebel, who authored many other fiction books within this genre, Of note, the book eerily predicts recent developments in real life American politics, Eddie Quinn, the protagonist, may have presaged Donald Trump by fifty years but there were times where I read the dialogue and smiled.
It's as if theth President channels Knebel's earlier creation of the political outsider taking on the establishment, Read in. No memory of author or title, Three weeks before election day a presidential candidate dies, . . in a hastily called party conclave, Eddie Quinn is named to take his place, Eddie Who An obscure highway official from New Jersey, whose chief pleasures are cars, bowling and women, I found this to be a very interesting read, This one is kind of fun, A political story of a man who goes from being a truckdriver to a party's nominee,

Worth the time if you like Knebel or political fiction, I've read three other Knebel political thrillers, all of which I enjoyed, but this one may be my favorite, Perhaps reading it during midterm elections added to the fun, It is amazingand sad, as wellhow many elements of this still feel relevant to our politicsyears later, Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Read this one before the next presidential election! sitelink livejournal. com/. html

This book is going for a penny plus postage on the online used book store of your choice, and I recommend you

buy it now before the rush later this year.
Written in, anticipating theelection, it concerns the story of Eddie Quinn, an obscure former Congressman and New Jersey Turnpike Commissioner who is unexpectedly thrust to national prominence when the failing Republican presidential candidate suddenly dies three weeks before the election and the party reaches desperately for a replacement nobody, including the colourless VicePresidential candidate, wants to go down in history as the loser, and Quinn is goodlooking, doesn't drink or smoke, and is not known for dangerous views.


Although the Democrats are well in the lead with an intellectual Methodist state governor rather reminiscent of their realcandidate, Jimmy Carter, Quinn launches a populist rearguard campaign, promising tax cuts, an end to the military draft for young people, a system of ombudsmen, and much else, which instantly earns him the displeasure of the Republican grandees particularly the one who is nominally married to his lover but catches the interest of increasing numbers of voters, leading to a dramatic conclusion to the election.


There are several particularly intense incidents: Quinn's opening speech, where he attacks vested political interests like the ones that have just nominated him his gathering of a diverse group of trusted advisers a confrontation with black radicals in Quinn's home town which sounds a bit like my grandmother's home town of Plainfield and a fatal car accident which Quinn refuses to allow his team to cover up.
The author's tone towards lefties and feminists is a bit wearyingly snide not to mention New Jersey, "a corridor of swampy weather and toadstool habitations that called itself a state", but apart from that it's a real pageturner.


Of course, a book like this is always going to be partial wishfulfillment, See my list of Pope books was Hadrian the Seventh the orignial Mary Sue But Knebel mounts a sharp critique from the liberal Right a species that barely exists these days of conventional American political wisdom, and challenges the reader to wonder how change might come Things have now got worse, of course I strongly recommend this recent article from The Atlantic, How American Politics Went Insane for a review of what has gone wrong, mostly since this book was written.


Apart from the death of the liberal Right, there are other major differences between how politics happened inand how it happens today.
The most striking is that there was no twentyfour hour news cycle, The press corps did indeed follow the candidates around, but they were print journalists with their early evening deadlines TV was much more cumbersome and had to be carefully arranged in advance.
Minor gaffes by Quinn and his campaign staff are laughed off in a cordial way by all concerned, rather than becoming the focus of faux outrage by media talking heads.
There is no chance that a candidate's love affair with a married Congresswoman could evade scrutiny today for as long as Quinn gets away with it in this book.
There is a subplot with a sex tape of which there is only one copy,

Another point that hit me was that the only mention of TV debates is a brief reference to Kennedy/Nixon in, with the strong implication tha that experiment would never be repeated.
Debates are now of course an immovable part of the process, but we tend to forget that rather thanthat has only been the case since, when Gerald Ford killed his own chances of reelection by misspeaking about Eastern Europe.
Ford, who was theRepublican candidate in real life, was also something of a dark horse given that inhe was the fading House Minority Leader.


It's irresistible to compare the fictionalscenario of Dark Horse with the real situation forty years after, where one insurgent from outside the party leadership came within a few hundred delegates of capturing the Democratic nomination, and another insurgent actually is the Republican nominee.
Knebel's Quinn is closer in policy to Trump than Sanders, but has several redeeming points: he values intellectual input and thoughtful policymaking, he instinctively grasps the importance of reaching much wider than the white male demographic and challenges his own party on race and gender issues even if he doesn't end up where we might want him to, and he doesn't tell lies.
Immigration is a second or third generation issue, and the terrorists are domestic insurgents neutralised by negotiation, I would probably still have supported Quinn's Democratic opponent if I'd had a vote in this fictional, but I would have found it a tough choice.
Read the book for yourself, and see what you think,
.