The political novel is alive and well. Veteran historian and biographer John Stewart has followed up his entertaining blend of sci-fi and political economy, Visitors, with an insightful political thriller, The President.
Imagine The West Wing penned by Graham Greene and you'd be pretty close. In literary terms it's a little conventional to come under the Booker radar, but were it to find a sufficiently wide audience, it could have a profound impact on our moribund politics.
The novel's principal message is that if politicians want to engage with and inspire electorates, they need to look afresh at the relationship between politics and economics, and persuade voters that they can exercise effective direction over the economy and so protect the interests of all citizens, not just the wealthy. This, after all, is what democracy is supposed to be about.
Stewart's President Duncan is a widower and a reflective man, not afraid to allow the spiritual side of life to guide his political thought. So when one day he wakes up with a feeling that despite occupying the most powerful office on the planet he is unable to do anything of real value, he throws caution to the wind and decides to take on vested interests regardless of the consequences for his re-election later that year.
He starts by taking every opportunity to talk up the possibility of a more inclusive and just society. While avoiding specifics, he makes a strong argument that continued widespread poverty in the richest nation in history is a moral issue, and challenges his audiences to think in more ambitious terms about creating a fairer society.
"If human beings show no sign of moral sensitivity, are they human? Is morality an in-built requirement of humanity, and if it's absent will society suffer and eventually collapse?" he asks. "We have civil justice, now it's time to turn our minds to economic justice."
Finally, having secured the nation's attention, he poses three questions: what is location value? Who created it? And to whom does it belong? In so doing he sparks a fundamental debate about one of the cornerstones of conventional, neoclassical economic thinking: that the right to land ownership also confers on landowners the right to keep the rent that accrues in land values, wealth that is a consequence not of the labour effort of the landowner, nor of any capital applied to their land, nor even, exclusively, of any labour employed on it.
Land rent is a consequence of the natural workings of the economy over time, and as such is created by the whole community. Why then should landowners, who comprise a tiny proportion of the population, and include most of the richest corporations in the world, be entitled to keep it as if they were responsible for its creation?
By letting the questions hang, this canny president ensures the debate goes beyond the normal reactions to suggestions that location values be collected as a source of public revenue. People gradually come to see that it's not just another tax, nor is it an attempt to penalise landowners and entrepreneurs.
Quite the opposite in fact: in the long term, collecting rent would effect a much wider distribution of land and economic opportunities among the population. The creative and entrepreneurial potential of thousands – even millions – of citizens would be provided with a more conducive economic environment in which to flourish.
The president's cause is aided when a disillusioned corporate magnate and an influential media mogul come on side. But still the electorate must decide. It comes down to the wire, with California delivering the president four more years. In a further echo of The West Wing, Duncan's first act after his re-election is to persuade his defeated Republican rival to make his plan to reconstruct the economy a bipartisan affair.
At his inauguration, the president cites Kennedy's rallying cry, but concludes with a quote from Andrew MacLaren, a Labour MP between the wars: "Institutional charity and political expedients are no substitute for justice." Justice, when talking of people's ability to make something of their lives, is not served by welfare payments and the other devices of redistribution. It can only be served by creating an economy in which all have an equal chance to make the most of whatever talents and abilities they are born with. Stewart's president knows this.
There is no indication that either of the real-life candidates for president has the first clue what justice really means. The winner will first have to deal with the fallout from the financial crisis. While Stewart's book might not help much with that challenge, it gives plenty of pointers as to how such crises might be avoided in future.
Whoever wins next month, they will not be remembered as a great president unless they are prepared to tackle the economic root causes of injustice and instability. John Stewart's book provides the ideas, and a viable strategy, should either of them want to leave a genuine progressive legacy.