SOURCE: "Harrison Ford, Call Your Agent," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 25, 1996, p. 5.

In the following review, Dean offers tempered praise for Executive Orders.

In this, his longest and lumpiest collage of fundamental values and techno-babble, Tom Clancy resolves our Clinton-Dole-Perot-Nader uncertainties by suggesting the least of five evils: Jack Ryan for president.

Ryan—the indestructible, tighter-zippered superhero tied to Clancy and the CIA as closely as martini-weenie James Bond was to Ian Fleming and M15—certainly speaks what the electorate knows in its heart is right. "Please, do not send me politicians. I need people who do real things in the real world. I need people who do not want to live in Washington. I need people who will not try to work the system…."

He knows what's been klutzing up the system: "What ever happened to the truth?… It's all a game and the object...