A Novel Approach to the American Dream tells how thirteen former presidents work together to avert an existential threat to the nation they once led. That threat is an end to our experiment in self-government and the beginning of the American nightmare.Meeting in the Blue Room of the White House, one floor below the Oval Office, they review the origins the American dream, reflect on their colleagues’ usage of the phase and decide that a new version of the dream is needed. Bound by a pledge to tell the truth and only act with unanimity, they put aside their personal animosities, hyper-partisanship and deep policy differences, at least temporarily. Much to their chagrin, they learn that the American dream began as an amateur historian’s literary device. James Truslow Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for History in 1921. But the Crash of 1929 turned him into a hack writer, one being paid by the word. Adams created ‘the dream’ out of whole cloth and used it to propel his book, The Epic of America, through half a millennia of American history. Published in 1931, Adams’s Epic became a best seller.But Franklin D. Roosevelt used the phrase only once, Harry S Truman three times, Dwight D. Eisenhower eight times, and John F. Kennedy never as president. The reason was simple: James Truslow Adams had became infamous for his elitist and often racist screeds during the 1930’s and 1940’s.
As memories of Adams faded, the American dream took center stage in nearly two thousand presidential speeches, Messages to Congress and proclamations. From Lyndon Johnson through Barack Obama, ‘the dream’ was deployed to defy expectations, launch new programs and policies, leverage legislative agendas and defeat political opponents. Eventually, the phrase became so overused and commonplace that it seemed divorced from the reality most Americans faced.These thirteen former presidents decide to create a more futuristic, more vigorous and more vibrant vision of the American dream. Since time together grows short, all their considerable political skills are required to craft a document no one dares object to. And yet, even as they reach unanimity, they face the wrath of the man upstairs: Donald J. Trump. Intent on being part of a global kleptocracy, this raging narcissist envies the kings and tzars of centuries past. And everyday Americans are meant to be the subjects, servants and serfs of his American nightmare. Impossible? Probably. Surreal? Certainly. But then, what steps would YOU take to preserve our representative democracy? To prevent an American nightmare? Maybe, just maybe, this novel is your first step towards preserving the American dream for generations to come.