Emerging bestseller by a neocon: a Prez in love with her Dior purse

 The present & future of pop fiction: more cliches, stereotyped characters, atrocious values, and boring, stupid prose.  The character and intelligence of a nation is exhibited in its bestselling books.

Nicolle Wallace, communications director for Bush-Cheney '04 and later the White House, is out Tuesday with "Eighteen Acres: A Novel" (takes its title from an insider term for the White House complex), featuring a female president, chief of staff and White House correspondent: "Melanie pushed the tissue paper aside and gazed adoringly at the Dior bag she had splurged on for her thirty-seventh birthday. ... The elegance of the two-thousand-dollar Dior purse would be lost on most of Melanie's colleagues, but its perfection brought her a surprising amount of happiness. As Melanie pulled the purse out of its protective cloth and removed the paper stuffed inside, she suddenly felt worried that all of her electronics wouldn't fit into it properly. She looked at the three BlackBerrys-one for the classified e-mail system, one for the normal White House e-mail system, and one for her personal Yahoo account. ... Gently, she stacked the BlackBerrys, two phones, her ID for the West Wing, an ID and key for the underground command center she'd be evacuated to in case of a terrorist attack, her passes to the Pentagon and the State Department, an ID for the Camp David guard station, a West Wing parking pass, and her wallet and keys inside and closed it.

"She stopped in front of the hallway mirror to attach her hard pin to the lapel of her black Armani pantsuit. The small, round pin bearing the presidential seal signaled to the United States Secret Service that she was to be granted full access to the president. ... 'Morning guys,' she said to her agents as she hopped into the SUV that would take her less than two miles to the White House. ... Melanie stepped out of the SUV, holding her Dior bag protectively under her suit jacket so the fresh snow wouldn't touch the leather. She wished she'd worn a coat, but she'd stopped dressing for the seasons years ago. It could be ninety-seven degrees outside, or minus seven, and the climate was always a cool sixty-six degrees inside the West Wing, where she'd be for the next sixteen hours. Melanie climbed the single flight of stairs to her office and walked inside. Her assistant, Annie McKay, was already there." $15 on Amazon http://amzn.to/bJJzn1 USA Today rave, with pic of Nicolle http://usat.ly/byL2rl