YMMV / Advise & Consent

• First Installment Wins: Few people are aware that this is only the first book in an entire series. Probably for good reason considering how the rest of the series went downhill.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the later novels Capable of Honor and Preserve and Protect, the strawman liberal media does everything they can to steer the course of the presidential primaries, including writing outright lies about Orrin Knox, covering up violent acts by the supporters of Ted Jason, and colluding with Jason's campaign. Seemed like a typical Strawman Political rant by Allen Drury, until the 2016 election rolled around and strategic leaking of stolen emails by WikiLeaks with the help of Republican operatives caused many to believe a narrative of smears against Senator Bernie Sanders on the part of the Clinton campaign.
  • Conversely, one could point out an extremely controversial President coming into power with the alleged assistance and approval of the Russian government also mirror the election, though Drury got the (implied) parties wrong.
  • Also, one of the later novels features an armed mob storming the Capitol while Congress is in session, which reads much differently in 2021 than it did when the novels were first published.
  • Much of this may depend on where the viewer / reader is on the political spectrum, naturally, with the heroes and villains lining up accordingly with their worldview.
• It Was His Sled: Brig Anderson commits suicide after Leffingwell's supporters try to blackmail him with evidence of his homosexual affair.
• Nightmare Fuel: The later books contain some of the creepiest portrayals of what can happen when mobs are allowed to run rampant in democracies. The nameless, faceless goons of the black-suited NAWAC beat Orrin Knox's daughter so badly she has a miscarriage, routinely shut down opposing political rallies using violence, and try to kill President Abbott because they don't like his decision about who will be the nominee in the next election.
• Strawman Political: The novels are extremely guilty of this, caricaturing the President, Leffingwell and Van Ackerman as liberal monsters who sell out their colleagues (and ultimately the United States) for personal gain. The sequels take it up to eleven with caricatured characters like "Terrible Terry," the African statesman in A Shade of Difference who travels the US inciting race riots and in the very next book, Capable of Honor, is transmuted into a crucial Cold War ally of the United States - how's that for Heel–Face Turn?, the pro-Communist journalists and Black Power leaders in Capable of Honor, and Governor Ted Jason in Preserve and Protect and Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, under whose watch the United States becomes a Soviet vassal state. The film pointedly averts this by employing Gray-and-Grey Morality and eliding subplots that play up these differences.
• Values Dissonance: Younger viewers may have trouble with the plot point that a senator could be driven to suicide by the threatened revelation of a homosexual affair in his youth. Except that actually happened in real life: It was inspired by the real-life story of Sen. Lester C. Hunt, who killed himself in the Capitol building, although in his case it was after being blackmailed over his son's homosexuality.
• Vindicated by History: The film was not particularly successful upon release, but is regarded today as an intelligent political drama with a subplot that features surprisingly serious and sympathetic depiction of homosexuality for the time period.
• The Woobie: The entire Anderson family. Watching them slowly get crushed by the juggernaut of American politics is what drives a good portion of the plot.

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