Jonathan Freedland – writing as Sam Bourne – has written a book with the provocative title To Kill The President. Ryan Tubridy loves everything about the book, starting with the cover, which, he says, reminds him of his childhood when his parents’ bookshelves were full 70s paranoia-infused political thrillers like The Day of the Jackal.
The same thought occurred to Freedland when he saw the cover, he says, and:
"One of the first people to see an advance copy of the novel was the great novelist Ian Rankin, who immediately said, this is The Day of the Jackal for these dizzying times."
The novel is the story of a right-wing President of the United States, who’s a volatile demagogue who likes to tweet a lot and, in a fit of pique, decides to go to war with North Korea. Freedland, naturally, insists that the book is fiction and tells Ryan that he finished it before the current president was even sworn into office. But what timing!
"The opening of the book is this new president – he’s only been in office a few months – gives the order to launch a nuclear strike against North Korea."
Nuclear armageddon is narrowly averted at the start of the book, but how realistic is this scenario, Ryan wonders. After all, every American president is bound by checks and balances, aren’t they? Freedland has done his research and was more than a little alarmed to find that:
"It turns out that of all the powers that an American president has, the least checked, the least balanced or restrained is his or her power over the nuclear arsenal."
So that’s reassuring. Wait, no, actually, it’s not. It’s unsettling and unnerving. And it’s all Harry Truman’s fault, apparently.
Having scared the heck out of us with a description of just how easy it is for the President of the United States to launch the huge array of nuclear missiles at his disposal, Freedland talks us down a little by telling Ryan that, "thriller writers, their two best friends are the words, what if?". In To Kill The President, the question is what if a reckless president’s staff – in this case, the Defence Secretary and the Chief of Staff – felt compelled to stop their boss?
"If they felt their own president, the person they were sworn to serve, if they felt that person was a threat, not only to their own country, America but really to the world, where would their moral duty lie?"
The protagonist of Freedland’s novel is a woman called Maggie Costello. Why is an Irish woman starring in the book, Ryan wants to know. It turns out that she’s appeared in more than one of Freedland’s books, and when the idea came to him for To Kill The President, he immediately thought of putting the Irish-born Maggie centre stage.
"There is an Irish diaspora in far-flung places, who are often doing very good work in aid organisations and in international bodies. In the UN, Ireland often punches above its weight."
All this meant that an Irish character fitted Freedland’s notion of having a Washington outsider be the protagonist of his book. When Maggie, now working for the US government, uncovers a plot to kill the president – a man she doesn’t like – she has to decide what her moral duty is. "What a great dilemma," is Ryan’s take on it. Indeed...
To Kill The President is published by HarperCollins. You can hear the full discussion with Jonathan Freedland, including why it’s Harry Truman’s fault that the US President can launch his nuclear arsenal at a moment’s notice, and listen back to the rest of The Ryan Tubridy Show here.
