A presidential speechwriter faces a series of events that threaten his career and the administration he works for in this political thriller by John Buckley. As presidential speechwriter Tom O'Malley prepares for a visit with the administration to South America, his former roommate, who's now a bigshot drug dealer, begins blackmailing Tom into bringing cocaine back with him. As Tom's use of pot in the 1970s begins to haunt him through his roommate's threats, he finds himself in an unfortunate series of events that seriously threaten his career and the new Democratic president he is working for. With his CIA operative father and a dimwitted Senator complicating his position, Tom must figure out how to put an end to the blackmail without anyone else finding out. "John Buckley has apprehended the fundamental Washington paradox--a trifling, petty-minded, Goody Two-Shoes government trying to run a sprawling, filthy, dirty country." --P. J. O'Rourke, author of Holidays in Hell