Exclusive Interview with Richard North Patterson

The Race is a breathless account of the brutality, cynicism and raw ugliness of a tight, three-way Republican primary. The opening rounds of this year’s real-life presidential race provide a compelling backdrop.

Patterson has created an all-American hero, Senator Corey Grace. Like McCain, he was once tortured at the hands of a foreign enemy and he regularly upsets the right wing of the party. Unlike McCain, his budding romance with a glamorous African-American film star could jeopardise his presidential ambitions.

Grace is pitted against Rob Marotta, a heavily focus-grouped puppet of the business community, and Reverend Bob Christy, a shrill evangelical fighting America’s moral decline.

When the book was conceived in 2004, it seemed unlikely that McCain could rise from his berth in the Senate to the top of US politics. Even fewer predicted the emergence of his business-friendly rival Mitt Romney or evangelical Mike Huckabee. But Patterson’s crystal ball has proved remarkably accurate, and the result is a highly enjoyable expos? of the black arts of politics, which both accidentally and deliberately draws on real life.

“I talked to every Republican operative there is. I said look, if you were running against Corey Grace and wanted to take him down, what would you do? And they told me. They wouldn’t tell a reporter. But my job is to fictionalise it in a way that their fingerprints aren’t on it, and that’s a privilege I have,” Patterson said.

An urbane trial lawyer, Patterson has written eight consecutive international bestsellers, including courtroom dramas. But Patterson has tackled US politics by setting up his own artificial “right” and “wrong”. “Good” politicians in this novel make their decisions solely on principles and values. They must defeat “bad” politicians who use strategy, polling and focus groups to find their way.

It just so happens that almost all Republican politicians fall into the “bad” camp.

“I believe political fiction has all the potential for drama as the courtroom, because there are no rules or less rules,” he says. “People play so hard in post-Watergate, post-Rovean politics that it has become so unbelievably nasty.”

As the close of nominations draws near, Senator Grace’s reputation is being traduced with racist smears and innuendo by a pair of cartoon villains on Marotta’s campaign team. They include Magnus Price, a political operative inspired by Karl Rove, the Bush strategist.

Price is helped by Alex Rohr, a billionaire media mogul using his newspapers and “Rohr TV” stations to promulgate anti-Grace propaganda. “News is a business, not a public service. If we also use that power to promote our friends and advance our interests, so be it,” cackles the somewhat caricatured newspaper tycoon cut-out at one point.

The cynicism about the political process in The Race contrasts, sometimes jarringly, with the impossibly high expectations of its hero. Corey Grace is a near-perfect politician, a Republican version of The West Wing’s President Jed Bartlett, with refined judgment and little need for compromise. He is clearly born of the author’s frustration at the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.

“The not-so-tacit thesis of the book is that Americans want someone who tells the truth, they want someone who respects them enough to say what he or she really thinks even if it’s not always of the most palatable things,” Patterson says.

“We have this market-driven, poll-tested focus group where a Kerry or a Gore tries to be who he’s told each day. But I think people have a deep craving for authenticity. I said a year ago that’s what was behind McCain in 2000 and could spark again. That’s what’s behind Obama. So the romantic thesis of this book is really proven out.”

Yet this romanticism comes at a price: Patterson is reluctant to acknowledge the grey areas between heroic “principle” and cynical “strategy”. Although he has not endorsed any candidate, Patterson makes no secret of where he is coming from. He is a Democrat with bipartisan friendships including McCain, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama. His connections are gold-plated: he and his partner recently spent a day at Chequers with Gordon and Sarah Brown.

The Race is so infused with his own political perspective that some might see it as Democrat propaganda. Apart from the impeccable Grace, few Republicans are presented in a sympathetic light and most are implicitly or explicitly smeared as racists.

“She’s very well spoken,” says one Republican wife to another at a Washington ball about Lexie Hart, Grace’s African-American love interest. “Usually they’re not so well educated.”

The political strategists also make no secret of their ability to use racism in campaigning. “A good bit of the electorate is natural selection in reverse - racists, Confederate flag nuts, fundamentalists so dumb they think Jesus spoke English,” says Price.

So what does this say about Patterson’s attitude to American political life? “A lot of modern political operatives have reduced politics to two things: marketing and winning. [But do] you think politics is about winning and losing or some larger public policy purpose which means the process could be more uplifting?”

The Race by Richard North Patterson
Macmillam, £16.99