The view, still held by many Americans, that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore disqualified from occupying the White House was almost inevitably bound to become the stuff of fiction. This book "An Illegal President A Novel Of Deception", may well be the first of several. The author probably thought of making his hero an African-American politician but decided to cast him as an elderly, white Senator from the Midwest.
Harry Bailey is well ahead in the polls in his bid for the White House but he's a complete fake. He is really a former Nazi concentration camp guard by the name of Horst Barnuch. This is no ordinary "I was just obeying orders " type of guard. He is a man who personally murdered dozens of camp inmates. Barnuch's fate seems sealed as the Red Army's assault on the camp continues in 1945. But when he sees the body of another guard he puts on the dead man's uniform and assumes his identity. The Soviets and the US army are fooled.
After weeks of interrogation Barnuch is released without charge. He smuggles himself to the US and moves to Des Moines where he quietly and painstakingly completes his makeover over a period of years. Barnuch is a born linguist, able to master English so well that there's no trace of an accent. Everyone accepts him for who he says he is. A fake birth certificate completes the perfect deception and Barnuch, now Harry Bailey, enters politics.
He becomes a Congressman and then a Senator, but catastrophe strikes when the Washington Post tells him that a camp survivor has told the paper that he's convinced Harry Bailey is "Barnuch the Butcher". Stunned, Bailey holes up at his home, dreading a call that the Post has tracked down his real, German, birth certificate.
It looks all over but as Bailey writes a statement quitting the presidential race, he gets a call from his chief aide. There is no smoking gun because all the prewar birth certificates in Dresden were destroyed when an Allied bomb hit the public records office. Reprieved at the eleventh hour Bailey tears up his confession and proceeds to win the race for the White House.
This novel makes riveting reading, particularly because the author exploits the ambivalence many people will feel for Bailey's plight. Readers will ask themselves whether they want him to get away with his audacious con trick or not. They may never be really sure of the answer.
But one has to ask whether the whole scenario is really plausible. The plot is exciting but much of it is weak. One wonders how Barnuch/Bailey managed to avoid discovery for so long. Even learning English as quickly as he does, he surely would have had at least a slight foreign accent. That alone would have disqualified him from standing for the presidency, never mind his war crimes. And, in the real world, it is probable that the Israelis would have hunted him down.
In the end one has to ask whether the whole plot of "The Saving of an Illegal President A Novel" is just too ridiculous for words. Probably yes. But it works wonderfully as pure theater. The anti-climax of Bailey's reprieve is brilliant, the future of the world's superpower hinging on where one bomb landed in one German city all those years ago.
Harry Bailey is well ahead in the polls in his bid for the White House but he's a complete fake. He is really a former Nazi concentration camp guard by the name of Horst Barnuch. This is no ordinary "I was just obeying orders " type of guard. He is a man who personally murdered dozens of camp inmates. Barnuch's fate seems sealed as the Red Army's assault on the camp continues in 1945. But when he sees the body of another guard he puts on the dead man's uniform and assumes his identity. The Soviets and the US army are fooled.
After weeks of interrogation Barnuch is released without charge. He smuggles himself to the US and moves to Des Moines where he quietly and painstakingly completes his makeover over a period of years. Barnuch is a born linguist, able to master English so well that there's no trace of an accent. Everyone accepts him for who he says he is. A fake birth certificate completes the perfect deception and Barnuch, now Harry Bailey, enters politics.
He becomes a Congressman and then a Senator, but catastrophe strikes when the Washington Post tells him that a camp survivor has told the paper that he's convinced Harry Bailey is "Barnuch the Butcher". Stunned, Bailey holes up at his home, dreading a call that the Post has tracked down his real, German, birth certificate.
It looks all over but as Bailey writes a statement quitting the presidential race, he gets a call from his chief aide. There is no smoking gun because all the prewar birth certificates in Dresden were destroyed when an Allied bomb hit the public records office. Reprieved at the eleventh hour Bailey tears up his confession and proceeds to win the race for the White House.
This novel makes riveting reading, particularly because the author exploits the ambivalence many people will feel for Bailey's plight. Readers will ask themselves whether they want him to get away with his audacious con trick or not. They may never be really sure of the answer.
But one has to ask whether the whole scenario is really plausible. The plot is exciting but much of it is weak. One wonders how Barnuch/Bailey managed to avoid discovery for so long. Even learning English as quickly as he does, he surely would have had at least a slight foreign accent. That alone would have disqualified him from standing for the presidency, never mind his war crimes. And, in the real world, it is probable that the Israelis would have hunted him down.
In the end one has to ask whether the whole plot of "The Saving of an Illegal President A Novel" is just too ridiculous for words. Probably yes. But it works wonderfully as pure theater. The anti-climax of Bailey's reprieve is brilliant, the future of the world's superpower hinging on where one bomb landed in one German city all those years ago.
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