He slipped his carbon to his friend Ted Solotaroff, editor of the new New American Review, who had already printed one of my stories in his second issue.

Mr. "Soothsayer" Brown, political kingmaker, narrates the story of how his party, certain to lose the upcoming U.S. presidential election against an extremely popular incumbent, finds itself transformed out of nowhere at their convention by the arrival of the Cat in the Hat, with the slogan "i can lead it all by myself".

[4] All set to nominate Riley and Boone, the better to run them again in four years, news of the Cat arrives, preceded by his maverick cheerleaders Ned and Joe.

A meeting is arranged between Brown and Clark, the Cat's chief spokesman and campaign manager.

The national campaign, with Sam (naturally called Sam-I-am) as vice presidential nominee, starts to the Cat's easy advantage.

At a rally, Brown, Joe, and Ned are tarred-and-feathered, Sam is assassinated, and the Cat is captured by a mob and tied upside down.

In the end, Brown's party wins, running Riley and Boone as originally planned, playing up the Cat as a martyr.

...the sheer awful exuberance of the central absurdity here—which somehow, paradoxically, tempers Coover's naked loathing with Seuss' more good-natured mania—works to perfection: a devastating, across-the-board swipe at presidential imagery and campaign hype, perhaps even righter for Election '80 than it was for the more issue-centered nightmares of '68.