Synopsis from The 28th Amendment
What happens when an actor who portrays a fictional US president on television gets drawn into real-world politics?
In Neal Rechtman’s future political thriller The 28th Amendment, set in the year 2019, an actor named Victor Glade plays the President in a long-running television series called The Oval Office, and does his job a little too well--embarrassing and threatening the Administration of the real President, Republican Burton Grove.
When a wealthy fan of The Oval Office launches a campaign to draft Glade into the 2020 presidential race, Glade insists he won’t run, and instead discharges his civic duty by endorsing the 28 th Amendment--a proposal to replace private campaign contributions with public funding for Federal elections.
The already-paranoid Grove Administration, vehemently opposed to the 28th Amendment, soon concludes that The Oval Office is no longer just a television show but also an unregistered political party, and tries to shut it down.
The result is a startling, twisting tale of espionage, domestic terrorism and presidential politics that pits the Grove Administration’s theocratic Chief of Staff, Morely James, against
By turns intelligent, fascinating, and outrageously funny, Rechtman’s narrative works on several levels: it’s a chilling parable of the US government’s relentless stoking and exploitation of our nation’s post-9/11 Osamaphobia; and in the realm of non-fiction, the 28th Amendment is an actual proposed amendment to the US Constitution that readers can support by signing a petition at the book’s Web site www.amendment-28.com
