Supreme Courtship

The President of the United States, Donald P. Vanderdamp, has an approval rating barely above twenty. Congress, and politicians of both parties, despise him, because he has vetoed every spending bill that reached his desk. In retaliation, the Senate has rejected the two eminently qualified jurists he nominated for an open seat on the Supreme Court. All he wants to do is move back home to Wapakoneta, Ohio, where he can go bowling as often as he wishes. His term is almost up. About all that remains is to find someone who can gain the approval of the Senate for that Supreme Court slot.Enter Judge Perdita "Pepper" Cartwright, star of the top-rated reality TV show, Courtroom Six. While searching for a bowling show on television over a weekend at Camp David, President Vanderdamp chances upon Pepper's show and is immediately enchanted. Now in her mid-thirties, Pepper is uncommonly facile with the English language—and uncommonly attractive. The President is convinced the Senate won't dare reject her nomination, given her sky-high Q rating.This is the set-up in Supreme Courtship, Christopher Buckley's satirical treatment of the U.S. Supreme Court. No reader will be surprised to learn that Pepper is, in fact, named to the Court. Then, of course, the real fun begins. The novel is amusing and even hilarious at times. On the whole, though, it's not one of Buckley's best.

Laugh out loud funny in the beginning. Unfortunately, the humor tapered off as the story progressed.I would have liked to see Pepper continue in her irreverent vein, with the same down-home, down-to earth humor and snappy dialogue she exhibited at the start. The story was good, however , and I do highly recommend this book

I ordered this book after seeing an interview with Christopher Buckley on the CBS Sunday Morning show. I have enjoyed several of his past efforts and this one sounded like a natural after hearing his explanation of his latest effort at satire.Getting nominations to the US Supreme Court approved in the US when a Republican is President and the Democrats are in charge of the Senate has become politcal theater at it's worst since the nomination of Judge Robert Bork. Getting "borked" has become a verb in the English language and it is with that as background that Buckley sets out to take Washington to task once again.The president in this novel has become so angered by the perfunctory manner in which two sterling nominees were turned down by the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by a Senator who himself wants to be appointed, that he names The Hon. Pepper Cartwright to the Supreme Court vacancy. Cartwright is the TV judge of a hit television show and wildly popular with the American public.That, to me, sounded like a story line that couldn't miss as great satire but alas and alak, I found this book often hitting wide of the target. Not that there aren't some hilarious parts to the book, but they were widely spaced and often disconnected from the central story.I really wanted to like this book. Buckley confided to Leslie Stahl in his interview that his late father, William F. Buckley, Jr. was not a fan of his satire. Until this book, I would have disagreed with that sentiment. I hope his next effort finds him returning to form.

Went on to read his Relic Master, and Judge Hunter set in historical past and enjoyed them more. I wanted the Supreme Courtship main character to stay closer to her roots and have the chaos as occurs in Buckley books to come out of that. It was still enjoyable, but I would really like to see some more of the historical please

And it is. If Buckley-the-younger's other stuff was good, this is great. Remember when Earl K. Long, thinking about the Louisiana law what said a governor could only succeed himself once? Earl came up with an almost Einstein-like thought experiment: has asked--rhetorically, of course--"what would happen if, maybe 6 months before an election, I stepped down from being governor?"A. J. Liebling, in his wonderful book, The Earl of Louisiana, says, "Even Huey [Earl's older and far more famous brother] didn't think of that." Blaze Starr was never as good-looking as Lolita Davidovich, who played opposite Paul Newman in Blaze, but most of the history was accurate. I remember--I grew up in New Orleans and was in a very political family, so I saw it all happening in what passed for real time back in the day.President Vandercamp, bowling enthusiasm notwithstanding, inspires the opposite in his Congressional adversaries: they propose and, in Congress, pass a term limit amendment. Then it gets interesting....

Christopher Buckley's Supreme Courtship is a wonderful parody of the extent to which entertainment and politics have merged. It also pokes excellent fun of the nomination process.In the book, an Eisenhower type President gets frustrated by the Senate Judiciary Committee for rejecting all of his highly qualified justices. One justice is rejected because of a movie review he wrote in the sixth grade in which he said that To Kill a Mockingbird was a "little boring." This causes the head of the Judiciary Committee to declare he could not in good conscious appoint a justice 'who may show up to his first day on the bench dressed not in a justices robe but in a Ku Klux Klan outfit."This turns out to be the last straw for the President, who responds by nominating a TV judge - sort of a younger, hotter Judge Judy. The public loves the idea and no Senator could risk voting against her. Hilarity ensues.A fun read and excellent parody.

Great potential but the plot line falls off. The premise of Judge Judy being a SCOTUS judge is hilarious but the plot quickly veers off with all of the other characters' plot lines. Author should have stuck to Judge Pepper's time on the bench.