Capital Follies.

• Author: Meacham, Jon
• Position: Review

Pity the plight of the late millennial Washington satirist. What's left to parody when the most-read insider book of recent years can, with a narrative voice that mixes Joe Friday with Judith Krantz, spin uncontroverted tales of presidential phone sex and stained Gap dresses, hat pins and Kleenex, Linda Tripp and Lucianne Goldberg? Jonathan Swift would have envied the Starr Report--and the independent counsel's ghostwriters had it all under oath.

So it is high testament indeed to Christopher Buckley's extraordinary talent that he has once again produced a terrific Beltway novel, one that takes readers on a first-hand tour of the capital's little-known folk-ways, deftly skewering the pretensions of the pundit class and the Establishment's sense of entitlement. And did I mention the alien abductions?

The plot goes roughly like this: John Oliver Banion, a buttoned-down commentator in his late forties with tortoiseshell glasses, his own Sunday morning TV show and a wife named Bitsey, is at the top of the Washington food chain. Author of books like Pig's Breakfast: The Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy from Cuba to Beirut, Colossi of Rhodes, an "admiring" study of Rhodes scholars, and Screwing the Poor, a bestseller on welfare reform, Banion comfortably dashes off a newspaper column, gives pricey speeches and relies on his impoverished Georgetown research assistants.

When we first meet our hero, he is slapping around the president of the United States on the air. "`Mr. President,' Banion said, `I want to ask you why, in light of your administration's below-par performance in a number of areas, you haven't fired at least two-thirds of your cabinet, but first...' It was a trademark Banion opener: establish the guest's inadequacy, then move along to the even more pressing issue. The president maintained a glacial equanimity. For this he had gotten up early on Sunday and helicoptered all the way back to Washington. The press secretary would suffer ... The president smiled, suppressing his desire to pick up the water pitcher and smash it against the forehead of this supercilious twerp."

Buckley knows his territory, and the words he puts in the mouths and heads of powerful people have the ring of truth--which is, of course, the mark of a great satirist. Once a speechwriter for Vice President George Bush, Buckley has written two other dead-on Washington novels: The White House Mess, a perfect send-up of the classic capital memoir, and Thank You For...