Cold War Horse

THE CANFIELD DECISION

by SPIRO T. AGNEW

344 pages. Playboy Press. $8.95.

In the age of Roman gravitas, public men in disgrace fell upon their swords. Today they fall upon their pens. Such impalings have been especially popular and profitable for the resigned, the indicted and the convicted of the Nixon Administration. Publishers were quick to confer gilt by association upon men like John Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder and Charles Colson. Next to come is John Ehrlichman, who dropped out in some Paraguay of the mind to write a novel whose chief character is a "President Richard Monckton."

Novelist Spiro Theodore Agnew did not have Watergate to kick around. Earlier, more mundane transgressions forced his retirement from the vice presidency. He was already busy building a new career as an international businessman when the lives of his former Government colleagues started to fall dramatically apart. The Canfield Decision is about the destruction of a promising political career in 1983, but basically it is an old cold war horse of a novel, reminiscent of the bestsellers of the '50s and early '60s.

Agnew's projection of the next seven years is a world not unlike the present. Detente still holds. The Middle East is still a bear pit of Arab-Israeli animosity and big-power intrigue. At home, President Walter Hurley is winding up a second term of "no sudden moves, no scandals, no tricky p.r. ploys, no jet-set diplomacy."

Saints and Devils. Vice President Porter Canfield, who sorely wants to be Mr. President, seizes on the dullness in Washington as a campaign opportunity. The members of the press, he believes, are tired of tranquillity. "They need the saints and devils, the people-lovers and people-haters, the honey and the venom which are the raw materials of titillating stories." Contradicting official foreign policy, Canfield publicly urges that protective U.S. nuclear missiles be supplied to Israel.

Unfortunately his scheme plays into the hands of various nationalist groups, militant Zionists, assorted terrorists and some people who are not what they seem to be. The novel's plot is complicated, although not intricate. Canfield's arrogance and pride cause moral blind spots that bring about his downfall. Agnew's characters are stiff in the joints but serviceable. The settings --Washington, Iran, the interior of Air Force Two--are described with cursory authority, while Agnew's descriptions of beautiful women are done with lingering attention to detail.

A reader's first impression might be that The Canfield Decision was acquired during a break-in at Allen Drury's apartment. But in fact Spiro Agnew writes better--if, as he insists, "I have unequivocally written all the novel myself." He has even offered $25,000 to New York Post Columnist Harriet Van Home if she can prove her suspicion that he did not write the book. In any event, the novel's action--which includes brutal multiple murders and an anticlimactic missile crisis--has less energy than the rancorous opinions that stream from the mouths of the characters. Many of these views are clearly Agnew's own, and a disproportionate number demonstrate that the former Vice President bears a chronic grudge against the press. Although The Canfield Decision is not a roman `a clef, a nosy columnist named "Andy Jackerson" gets a going over. A Russian, for example, sees America in decline because "the country is under attack by professional critics with an unlimited supply of ink and microphones." Such a thing could not happen in the Soviet Union. If the author is a bit envious, it is understandable.

R.Z. Sheppard

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