‘Taft 2012’: A Presidential Time Warp

A burly beast of a man bursts into a presidential press conference and is shot in the leg by secret police. Two days later, the White House reveals that the befuddled intruder with a handlebar mustache is really former President William Howard Taft.

So begins Taft 2012, a novel that gives a satirical take on contemporary politics through the eyes of a president who served a century ago. Author Jason Heller places Taft in a 21st-century election campaign, where he is forced to sit in bars on New Year’s Eve and master Twitter along the way.

“I don’t think that there’s such a thing as too absurd,” Heller tells NPR’s David Greene on Morning Edition. “And I really like having him be sort of implausible.”