By Dimitri C. Michalakis

“I noticed that the two House Speakers back-to-back who were trying to impeach Bill Clinton had their own issues,” he recalls. “Both were having their own dalliances and had to resign. And most recently we had the governor of South Carolina flying off to Argentina to meet his mistress—and he was a family values guy. Then there’s this senator from Nevada messing around with his chief of staff’s wife. And there’s the governor of New York having to resign over his scandals with prostitutes. You can’t make this up!”

But he took up the challenge and pushed the envelope further with his recently published political spoof of presidential shenanigans and the woman behind the man who won’t stand for it called Hail to the Cheat, in which the First Lady gets even on her horndog husband by enlisting the ghosts of former First Ladies and taking over the White House and the country.

“She is one extraordinary woman who simply refuses to stand by her man,” Venetoulis describes the heroine of his novel. “She stands by her own dignity and principles and won’t allow herself to get humiliated. There’s a lot of twists and turns in the story and I think some pretty amazing characters who make up the political scene garnered from my years in politics.”

Venetoulis, still spry at 70, and still in the thick of his second career as publisher (he’s currently chairman of Corridor Media, Inc. and one of the principals interested in buying The Baltimore Sun), found the time to write the novel despite being as busy as ever.

“I have my business and family,” he says, “but I have to tell you, it was a joy writing it, because I don’t play golf—and my ankles are bad, so I can’t play tennis with my kids anymore. This became my hobby, and I’ve also got another one I’m working on and it’s kind of fun.”

One of the first comments on the book came from his son: “Hey, Dad, it’s a funny book, but I didn’t know my dad was so racy.” Other reactions have been just as astonished and astonishing: “Every once in a while I check up on Amazon and read the comments,” says Venetoulis, “and one of them stuck out: ‘If you’re looking for a funny book, this is it; if you’re looking for a woman’s book, this is it; if you’re looking for a funny woman’s book, get two of them.’ And I thought that was pretty good advice.”

He’s already thinking Hollywood (“A lot of people say it would be an interesting movie; some woman in Hollywood is going to want to play that role”), and he’s already considering a sequel: “But it’s hard to describe it until you’ve done it. I think I know where I’m going with it but it’s in the very early stages.”

In the meantime, as an old political hand, he can’t help getting engrossed in the real-life drama of a new administration taking hold in Washington, and as an old political firebrand, getting riled up.

“I’m a Democrat, and Nancy Pelosi and I grew up together, and she’s been a longtime friend, and damn it, we’ve got to show that we can govern, and people are waiting for that, and it’s very, very difficult, very difficult,” he vents his frustration. “I was telling my wife the other day that we won the election, and those who win should govern, and those who lost should not be governing, and I don’t think we’ve expressed that strongly enough. You want bipartisanship, but you can’t let the folks who lost the election act as if they won. We should say we’re changing these policies, this is what we were elected to do, and if we do them and then you don’t like them, you can throw us out.”

Meanwhile, he and his group of business investors are waiting on the Tribune Company to work out its bankruptcy proceedings and decide the dispensation of the venerable Baltimore Sun. “Of course, the big issue is, what do you get after you get it, if you get it? The way newspapers are today--not just newspapers--magazines, all the old style print-oriented publications; they’re all having trouble, because we haven’t handled the whole Internet process appropriately. I don’t know if we were too old fashioned, or just didn’t get it. There are a lot of big brains working on this thing, but they haven’t figured it out yet: The New York Times, The Washington Post, they’re all having trouble figuring out how to handle this particular media. So why get into this? my wife says.”

Then, as an old print man, he answers his own question: “I mean, what is a town without a paper? I don’t get it. Who’s going to look at these places and write about what’s going on and what everybody’s doing? A community needs its paper. If you’re in danger of losing a sports team, you go out and you build them a stadium to try to keep them, or to get them back. But for a newspaper what do you do? And that would be a more significant blow to a community in my mind than the loss of a sports franchise. And I think those of us who have that understanding and sense of responsibility have an obligation to do this. It might not work but I think I would feel remiss, and the others with me, if we didn’t at least make the effort.”

But still he never forgets to check up on politics, and even after dropping out himself (“I was tired of shaking hands and schmoozing and smiling fixedly”), he never ceases to be amazed by the fortitude of those who survive and even thrive in it. “I admire Paul Sarbanes, who was very quiet and laid back, but was a terrific senator. And I’m amazed by his son, John, who’s a terrific public official and might be even better than his dad, if that’s possible.”

And he regularly checks up on his old friend Nancy, who he once dated (“We were always talking politics”) and who he credits with steering Obama in the right direction. “They rough her up, but it rolls right off of her,” he marvels. “She still has her sense of humor, and remembers her friends, and remembers her values. It’s just a staggering performance.”

Very much like the First Lady of Hail to the Cheat?

“Yes,” he says of Nancy, but it could also apply to his beleaguered First Lady, “she only takes the crap that she does because she’s a woman.”