An uncharacteristically human caricature of Richard Nixon serves as protagonist and narrator for the primary continuity.

The novel satirizes the Cold War politics of Joseph McCarthy by portraying "The Phantom" as the embodiment of global Communism and everything that threatens the American way of life—a vague, terrifying, and omnipresent enemy.

The ugly side of the American psyche this draws out is characterized by an incarnation of Uncle Sam who unleashes a torrent of interminable verbosity in a folksy, foul-mouthed style whenever he appears.

[2] Then having published the novel, once it became a bestseller, Viking immediately abandoned all support, and withdrew copies without explanation.

It has been called "perhaps the most complete replenishment of the language since Whitman and (in a different way) Mark Twain ... no writer since Melville has dived so deeply and fearlessly into this collective American dream as Coover has in this novel".