In March The Scrapbook introduced readers to the Boxer Prize—a very special literary award given to famous authors, typically celebrity or politician authors, whose fictional heroes bear a striking resemblance to their creators. We call it the Boxer Prize in recognition of former California senator Barbara Boxer’s stupendously bad debut novel A Time to Run, about a liberal U.S. senator who risks her career by standing up to right-wing extremists. This year we have already nominated actor Sean Penn for his debut novel Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, in which the story’s eponymous hero is a barely coherent and ferociously profane left-winger who at one point meets with a Mexican drug lord.

We think we have another contender: Bill Clinton. The 42nd president has coauthored a novel with thriller-writer James Patterson titled The President Is Missing. We read the book and must admit it’s a pretty fun read—though the book’s readability as a thriller, we reckon, has more to do with Patterson’s abilities (or collaborator David Ellis’s) than Clinton’s. What makes us think Clinton should be shortlisted for the Boxer Award is its main character, President Jonathan Duncan. As The Weekly Standard’s Barton Swaim explains in the Wall Street Journal,