Potomac Melodrama

CAPABLE OF HONOR by Allen Drury. 531 pages. Doubleday. $5.95.

It is not necessary to master an art to become successful at it. There are celebrated singers who cannot hold a note and artists who cannot grasp the essentials of form and color. Then there is Allen Drury, who happens to be a bestselling novelist without much talent for writing. But Drury has a special gift--a reportorial eye and ear for detail and atmosphere, an expertise about political power, and a seasoned newsman's disdain for cant.

Capable of Honor is the third book in a tetralogy that Drury launched with his successful, widely read Advise and Consent. It lacks the spellbinding novelty of that first book. It is laden with passages that are even more clumsy and prolix than those in A Shade of Difference, the second in the series. But Drury succeeds again simply by cramming his book with intricately spun accounts of domestic skulduggery, international chicanery, congressional conniving, and White House squeeze plays--all of which spell bestsellerdom. What's more, old Senate Reporter Drury (who used to work for the New York Times) this time has heated up a special groin iron for political pundits. The central character here is a columnist named Walter Dobius ("Walter Wonderful"). And though Dobius may not resemble any single real-life oracle, readers can be forgiven if they detect a little bit of Walter Lippmann, a little bit of Scotty Reston, and a dash of Joe Alsop.

Sandals & Beards. The trigger that sets Drury's plot in motion is a revolution in the emerging African nation of Gorotoland. U.S. President Harley M. Hudson (the "Vice President" of Advise and Consent) cautions the insurgents against endangering American life and property there. But the rebels ignore him, kill 50 Americans and set fire to the local Standard Oil facilities. Hudson swiftly dispatches U.S. troops to Gorotoland, and goes on the air to tell the U.S.: "It was time to re-establish the fact that when America says something, she means it. Specifically, it was time to re-establish the right of American citizens, as long as they behave themselves, to go anywhere in safety on the face of this globe."

At once, of course, a thunderbolt of outrage cracks around the world. Moscow and Peking issue angry warnings. Demonstrators clog the streets outside U.S. embassies, and USIA libraries are burned. Headlines are black and thunderous; U.S. allies look grave and offer to mediate; the United Nations is in an uproar. In the U.S., sandals and beards and protest signs turn up everywhere. The liberal press is in a frenzy. Congressmen and Senators shake their heads solemnly and charge the U.S. with attempting to police the world.

Nobody is more incensed than pompous Walter Dobius, whose philosophy is, simply, better Red than dead. The Administration has gone mad, he declares. He demands that the Gorotoland case be dealt with in the U.N. Finally, the U.N. Security Council does act on its own. In a scene described with skill and impressive authenticity, the Council debates the issue and is on the verge of censuring the U.S.--when the American delegation casts its first veto in history.

Home & Abroad. Shocked disbelief. New demonstrations, both at home and abroad. President Hudson stubbornly sticks to his new policy. He reaffirms it when a revolution breaks out in Panama: he sends troops there to protect American lives and property. That tears it. Walter Wonderful decides that the President must go. He and his supporters stage a ruthless campaign to dump Hudson at a rowdy presidential nominating convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. Political guts get torn out by the handful. In the end, Hudson's people win, and Walter and his friends set out to establish a third party.

It can't happen here--but it's engrossing reading.

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