The central theme is the possibility that a charismatic candidate who embraces fascist doctrine will be elected president of the United States. The story is set in the near future when many European governments have banded together with a shared ideology that has boosted their economies and made their progress the envy of most Americans.
The Next President is also a love story, with complications. Catherine Cortez, the protagonist, is in a relationship with a U.S. senator. He’s asked her to marry him. She resists because she sees marriage to him as a career-killer—which is part of her motivation to get out from behind the news anchor desk at a major network and go after one last big story. She thinks she’s found it in Cuba, in the middle of a revolution, where she must confront former lover Carlos Perez, the leader of the revolution, who left her years before in Miami to return to Cuba.
Cortez is fundamentally an investigative journalist, once she gets away from the news desk. She struggles to expose the man poised to become the next president before he destroys the one thing Americans have always cherished: their freedom. She follows one story—a revolution in post-Castros Cuba—and discovers a bigger one in the candidate, who as senate majority leader, with ties to the military and the CIA, is behind the supply of illegal arms to the corrupt fascist government in Cuba. In her pursuit, she inadvertently puts her father’s life at risk—the father she didn’t know was still alive, the father she rediscovers in Cuba.
The ending is ominous.
