The Costco Connection

COSTCO CONNECTION

The President Is Missing is available in all Costco locations. (Item

#1243114; 6/4)

history of publishing; what am I doing? But I tried to make sure the president had an authentic and consistent voice. I learned a lot, watching the way this book was put together and amended and morphed over time, about how to do it.

JP: It’s a deeper, fuller thriller than pretty much anything I’ve ever written, and that was a lot in terms of the president. The characters just kept getting fleshed out, and fleshed out, and fleshed out. And that was President Clinton, pushing and pushing.

CC: As people read the book they may be trying to figure out the inspirations for each character.

JP: We assumed that would happen, but the reality is that’s not how we wrote the book.

BC: Nobody can take themselves out of anything
totally. But when I thought about this president,
he’s a whole different kettle of fish. Because I grew
up in his culture, I could hear his voice and I wanted
to preserve it through all the ups and downs and
developments. But we did not try to make our
biographies or politics be in the book.

JP: I hope that everybody, whatever their party or affiliation is, that they’ll go, “This is an example of the kind of president we should have.”

CC: What do you want readers to take away from this book beyond the exciting reading experience?

BC: That the presidency is a job. It’s all very well if our president says things we agree with and is, for whatever reason, somebody we like, but it is a job, and you’ve got to hire people who will make good decisions [and] get good people around him.

Secondly, cybersecurity is a major challenge for us, and one that we started dealing with in my second term, in 1997, but that we never thoroughly mastered, nor have we devoted sufficient resources to [it].

JP: I think the third thing is—and this is a little bit of a pipe dream—that we would begin to move toward listening to one another a little better than we’re doing. It’s not solving anything to throw mud at one another. It’s just not useful. And I think most people feel that.

BC: We’re not going to obliterate partisanship, we’re not going to obliterate conflict, we’re not going to obliterate the grandness of ambition, but we all need to show up to work.