Any Resemblance to Trump is Purely Coincidental

The Plot against America by Philip Roth.
Book Review by Michael Isenberg.

On September 11, 1941, Charles Lindbergh—the hero aviator, first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, and idol of millions—gave a speech to a rally of the America First Committee in Des Moines, Iowa. It was a passionate appeal for the United States to stay out of World War II. He argued that the American people opposed entering the war, and it would be a non-issue except for the agitation of three groups of people: British propagandists, the Roosevelt Administration---and the Jews. Of this last group he said “their greatest danger in this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.” Classic anti-Semitic trope. The Jews control everything.

What if, instead of giving that speech in 1941, Lindbergh gave it a year earlier—before the 1940 election? And what if that, combined with his own enormous celebrity, propels him to the Republican nomination for president and, in a surprise to everyone, he defeats the incumbent Franklin Roosevelt in November?

That is the premise of Philip Roth’s alternate history novel, The Plot against America. The novel has been made into a mini-series starring John Turturro and Winona Ryder. It premieres on HBO next week. But as I always say, this is Nerds who Read, and so today I will review the original Philip Roth novel.

Once in the White House, Lindbergh signs an “understanding” with Nazi Germany to keep the US out of the war. But many people, especially Jews, fear he has a plan to impose fascism on America.

We see all this from the point of view a typical Jewish family of the time. Interestingly, it is Roth’s own family. The nine-year-old narrator is named Philip Roth, son of Herman and Bess Roth, brother of Sanford “Sandy” Roth, all residing at 81 Summit Ave, Newark, New Jersey, just as the real-life Roths did.

As in To Kill a Mockingbird, a child narrator puts an idyllic spin on the story, in which the great events often go on in the background, as Philip is engrossed in more pressing concerns. Especially how the latest news is going to affect the amount of time he has to spend with his downstairs neighbor Selden, a drippy boy who follows Philip around with a chessboard. Whatever he does, Philip can’t shake him.

One of the things that intrigues me about history is that it seems so much more confusing when you’re in the middle of it than when you’re looking back decades or centuries later. Today we all know the Nazis were some of the most despicable and evil thugs in history. But during their rise in the 1930s, it wasn’t so clear to many people. Sure there were some like Winston Churchill and J.R.R. Tolkien who saw right through them—and got dismissed as “warmongers” for their trouble. But many others were taken in. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (the former Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson) visited Berlin in 1937 and met with Hitler—all smiles. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sat down with der Fuhrer in Munich in 1938 to carve up Czechoslovakia. He returned to England with a worthless piece of paper signed by Hitler and an announcement of “peace for our time”—less than a year before the outbreak of World War II.

Lindbergh himself made a number of trips to Nazi Germany, including attending the 1936 Berlin Olympics, after which he wrote to a friend that Hitler “is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe has done much for the German people.” In 1938, at a dinner at the American embassy in Berlin, he accepted a medal, the Service Cross of the German Eagle, from senior Nazi leader Hermann Göring.

And so it is with the fictional Lindbergh Administration. The anti-Semitism of Lindbergh’s Des Moines speech turns out to be a one-off event, leading many people to believe that he didn’t really mean it. Perhaps he was just poorly advised. His wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh even has a close Jewish confidante, Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf. By a remarkable coincidence, the rabbi marries Mrs. Roth’s sister Evelyn—a teacher and sort of younger version of Delores Umbridge. The marriage doubles as a convenient literary device by which the ordinary Roths, and therefore the reader, gain visibility into the inner workings of the White House.

In any case, nothing the Lindbergh Administration does is really that horrible, at least at first. Indeed Lindbergh seems to want to help the Jews become better integrated into American society. He sets up an Office of American Absorption (OAA), under Rabbi Bengelsdorf, which establishes the “Just Folks” program: Jewish children from urban areas are given an opportunity to spend a summer on a farm in the heartland. Sandy Roth is one of the first to sign up, over his father’s objections—which leads to a knock-down drag-out fight around the dinner table. Mr. Roth sees the sinister and intentional destruction of Jewish culture. You will be assimilated. “Just Folks was the first step in a Lindbergh plan to separate Jewish children from their parents, to erode the solidarity of the Jewish family.” Aunt Evelyn dismisses his concerns as the unfounded fears of “ghetto Jews,” a vile phrase which Sandy is soon imitating.

Aunt Evelyn wins the argument and Sandy goes off to a Kentucky tobacco farm and has a wonderful time. He comes back taller, more filled out—and thanks to the summer sun, blonder. The symbolism is not exactly subtle. The way he shows off his new agricultural vocabulary, words like “flyings” and “topping,” struck me as a very true-to-life portrait of a 13-year-old boy who has acquired some knowledge that the adults don’t share. Thanks to the machinations of Aunt Evelyn, he ends up as poster child for Just Folks with a string of speaking engagements. I can’t help wondering what the real Sandy Roth, who was still alive when the book was published, thought about his now-famous little brother casting him in the role of Collaborator.

The family quarrel over Just Folks turns out to be the first of many; they tear the family apart. The boys' father is still convinced that Nazi Germany is coming to America. Family and friends are skeptical. “Where are the Nazi Brown Shirts and the secret police?” they ask. “The Nazi criminals start with something small,” Mr. Roth warns, “and if they get away with it…” Still American boys aren’t dying on the battlefields of Europe. The stock market is going up and up. What’s not to like?

But amid all the debate over what Lindbergh has planned, and whether he is an anti-Semite, one thing is clear: he had emboldened less ambiguous anti-Semites to come out into the open. The Roths first encounter this on a sightseeing trip to Washington, D.C. As the descendants of victims of European pogroms, they know how much better off they are in America, and are passionately patriotic about it. They save for years so they can take their children to the nation’s capital and see all the monuments to great Americans. But Mr. Roth’s tendency to opine in an audible voice about how awful the Lindbergh Administration is, and how much better things were under Roosevelt, results in him being called a “loudmouth Jew” by more than one bystander. Further, when the manager of their hotel finds out they’re Jewish, he evicts them. They come back from sightseeing to find their bags packed and waiting for them in the lobby.

Sadly, these ugly incidents are merely a harbinger of much more terrible things to come.

My main criticism of the book was the ending (no spoilers, I promise). It was almost as if Author Roth got tired of it and just decided to wrap things up as quickly as possible. Some truly epic national events occur, but these are given rapid-fire in capsule format. Then we find out what the Roths were doing during these events, but since we already know the national outcome, there isn’t any suspense, and these pages really drag. Don't get me wrong, this is a good book. But had the national events been allowed to unfold at the pace of the rest of the novel, and the Roths’ lives intertwined with them in real time, as they had up to the final chapter, it could have been a much better one. Still, there’s a really clever twist near the end, which puts a whole new spin on the story, and which I won't spoil for you.

*           *           *

The celebrity president with the glamorous wife. No previous experience in elected office. Refuses to be a puppet to his handlers. The slogan, “America First.” The electoral upset. The polarization of Americans—even the polarization of families—as the president’s passionate detractors insist he’s a racist who is going to suspend civil rights and undermine the Constitution, while his supporters, equally passionate, claim it’s all fake news and everything he’s done is perfectly reasonable. It’s hard not to draw comparisons to President Trump.

Since The Plot against America was published in 2004, Mr. Roth obviously did not intend it as a Trump parable. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. As far as I’ve been able to determine, he didn’t have anyone in particular in mind other than Charles A. Lindbergh. He had heard that the Republicans had considered running Lindbergh in 1940, and he was intrigued and wanted to explore that idea. Of course, the intent of the makers of the upcoming HBO series is another matter entirely.

Whether the resemblance between the real-life Trump Administration and the fictional Lindbergh one is anything more than superficial, I leave as an exercise for the reader. Either way, The Plot against America is an intriguing story, with some vivid characters, and a timeless warning that, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com Please follow Mike on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to Nerds who Read.