When the White House is occupied by a former reality TV star who stages UFC cage matches on the property's South Lawn, obsesses over building an ornate ballroom, and unleashes a nonstop stream of schoolyard insults at his political opponents on his social media site, it takes considerable ambition on the part of any writer to tackle a political satire. 

That's precisely the task that Ben Fountain has set for himself in his latest novel, RASPUTIN SWIMS THE POTOMAC. The fact that he meets with less than total success isn't as much a commentary on his talent as it is on the absurdity of America's current political environment and its stubborn resistance to caricature. 

Fountain, who is no stranger to political satire as the author of a 2012 Iraq War novel, BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK, sets his book in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling that allows the president --- whose name inexplicably is redacted throughout but is unmistakably “that maestro of mass media manipulation,” Donald Trump --- to run for a third term. The “obese, jowly, elderly, garishly tinted and tanned Caucasian” governs a country afflicted with persistent mass shootings, inflation above 11 percent, and, worst of all, a wave of weeping sickness that causes masses of white people to break into tears spontaneously for no apparent reason. And as if the daily stuff of political life isn't enough, his administration has spawned a parallel TV show, “The Real West Wing,” which is now shooting its third season.

"Stylistic differences aside, if Hunter Thompson had abandoned political journalism to write a novel of presidential politics, it might bear some resemblance to this one."

Into this chaos enters professional wrestler Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, who “bears a middling resemblance to the historical Rasputin” and claims he's the reincarnation of that notorious figure. In fact, Rasputin, or the Wrath of God (one of his nicknames in the ring), is Patrick Walsh Strickland of Buffalo, New York, a former Green Beret and decorated veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has emerged in this persona after spending six years in a Russian Orthodox monastery but now lives in a mansion in an affluent Dallas suburb surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous women known as the Maidens. 

After Rasputin demonstrates a miraculous ability to stop outbreaks of the weeping sickness, Trump briefly considers replacing Vice President Marjorie Taylor Greene with the wrestler. But before long, a draft Rasputin movement, promising a “New Awakening” and bankrolled by dark money from billionaire former supporters of the sitting president, is launched. Calling for a religious revival founded on the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church and an "alliance of the world's two Christian superpowers," the United States and Russia, the wrestler quickly sparks a mass following, fueled by his deeply spiritual demeanor. 

Fountain narrates his story through the eyes of two markedly different characters. One is Faith Spack, a young White House communications aide who is a veteran of an “American Idol”-type show as a teenager and is wise beyond her years in the ways of modern media. The other is Clarence Thomas Jr. (no relation to the Supreme Court justice, though he's also Black), the National Affairs Correspondent for the online Dallas Daily, known as “the geezer paper.” In his more than 60 years, he has seen enough political shenanigans to give him a clear-eyed perspective on these goings-on, even at their most mystifying. His bemusement, tempered by experience, provides another effective observational stance for this story.

In prose that is energetic and wry, Fountain delivers a fast-paced and entertaining account of the increasingly raucous primary contest between the enigmatic wrestler and the floundering incumbent president. To Clarence, Trump offers “fascism-lite,” while Rasputin “might be the whole program.” As the campaign unfolds, there are moments when the book reads less like a novel and more as something in the vein of classics of political writing like Richard Ben Cramer's WHAT IT TAKES or Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series. Anyone who follows the snowy grind of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary or the Kabuki dance of recent political scandals will be familiar with the way the race plays out, even at its most outrageous, when the First Lady (whose name also is redacted) enters the picture. 

Fountain stokes the plot with some supernatural elements, including the weird behavior of Clarence and Faith's cell phones and an encounter with deceased comic novelist Terry Southern, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film Dr. Strangelove. Stylistic differences aside, if Hunter Thompson had abandoned political journalism to write a novel of presidential politics, it might bear some resemblance to this one. From Clarence's perspective, “It never ends…the noise, the spectacle, at some point our national life dropped acid and took up residence in a carnival mad house,” and Fountain captures the essence of that mad drama.

In Faith and Clarence, Fountain has created two characters of depth and sympathy whose struggles to make sense of the chaos that surrounds them are worthy of any serious novel. Even Rasputin never becomes a cartoon character. In the episode that ends the novel, for all its bizarre aspects, there is an emotional resonance that feels earned. 

But in this “era of the great spin-up, the mass unmooring of the American mind,” Fountain must confront the fact that even the most outlandish scenario he concocts no longer seems utterly implausible. As a result, for all its appealing moments, this send-up of our carnivalesque politics struggles to compete with the reality we can watch each day on 24-hour cable news.