To fight crime, the President and selected Congressmen meet secretly and illegally to choose an especially crime-ridden American town for destruction, after expelling it from the United States, to teach a lesson to all that crime doesn’t pay. Things get out of hand after the attack as lies spiral and the public’s mood becomes angry and confused. To end the crisis, the President calls a constitutional convention on the forged grounds that the Founding Fathers were impostors and crooks. But the administration finds it cannot control what is has unleashed at the convention, despite its efforts to cooperate with those seeking the republic’s destruction. From the plots against the President and debates on political issues a new system emerges providing the kind of government the political class and citizenry appear to want, a thinly disguised divine right monarchy run by an “executive sovereign” with an advisory Congress.