In 1979, Lynne Cheney, the wife of the present American vice president, published a novel, Executive Privilege. It was no jewel of fine writing, but merely another entry in a popular genre of the day, the presidential-conspiracy-thriller bonkbuster. (Even Spiro Agnew got in on the act with his own literary masterpiece, The Canfield Decision, now sadly forgotten.) Her story tells of a new president from the western state of Montana, brisk and determined, dedicated to regime change abroad in the interests of his native land. Zern Jenner is a modest and understated man, a workaholic whose guiding principles are ‘tenacity and self-control’. He stands tall against his enemies in the press, the Senate and the environmentalist movement; he insists on confidentiality, executive privilege and ‘martial law tribunals’ for terrorists. And when a group of Indian activists claim their rights over coal-rich territory in Wyoming, Jenner contemptuously brushes them aside. ‘This country’, he says, ‘needs that coal.’

Lynne Cheney was writing at a time when the American presidency had never seemed weaker, its power and credibility sapped by the revelations of Kennedy’s amorous intrigues and Nixon’s brooding conspiracies. The president of the day, Jimmy Carter, had brought the office to a new low, collapsing in front of