Dog on a Rope

After leading the nation into two wars and an economic downturn, the president prepares for the stretch run of his re-election campaign by relapsing into a cocaine habit that triggers a fatal heart attack. Meanwhile, a group of Democratic senators decide the surest way to connect with voters is by finding their own version of Ronald Reagan --- presidential looking, smooth talking, friendly, affable, and a gets-his-hands dirty outdoorsman. A photo op of the candidate chopping wood leads to a heat stroke. Thus, it is politics as usual as the behinds-the-scenes operatives wheel and deal and navigate through a landscape that includes assassins for hire, voting machine hackers, and a Spanish prosecutor intent on taking the liars who concocted the war in Iraq to a court of law. Against this backdrop, Jay Dean Fine, a high school football coach fired for cheating, tries to make amends and get his dream back on track by working as a cowboy on a cattle ranch in the Flint Hills of Kansas while he figures out how to reunite with the wife and daughter he had left behind in Texas two years earlier. Returning home, he follows Interstate 35 back to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, encountering as twisted a version of America as Huck Finn and Jim encountered in their trip down the Mississippi River.