Welcome to the last Morning Jolt until July 27. Shock: Americans Starting to Remember Why They Never Liked Hillary Well. Isn't this an interesting development, a major curveball for all the Hillary-is-inevitable true believers: Just 39 percent of all Americans have a favorable view of Clinton, compared to nearly half who say they have a negative opinion of her. That's an eight-point increase in her unfavorable rating from an AP-GfK poll conducted at the end of April. The drop in Clinton's numbers extends into the Democratic Party. Seven in 10 Democrats gave Clinton positive marks, an 11-point drop from the April survey. Nearly a quarter of Democrats now say they see Clinton in an unfavorable light . . . The survey suggests that voters aren't sold on her reinvention: Only 4 in 10 voters say they view Clinton as "compassionate." Just 3 in 10 said the word "honest" described her either very or somewhat well . . . The percentage of respondents calling Clinton at least somewhat inspiring also slipped from 44 percent to 37 percent. Even the number of voters saying Clinton is at least somewhat decisive, previously a strong point for the former New York senator, fell from 56 percent in April to 47 percent in the new poll. Those Democrats will come home; they always do. But these numbers suggest she has terrible numbers among independents and (unsurprisingly) near-unanimous opposition from Republicans. Ted Cruz Gets on the Bestseller List . . . a Week Late Hey, remember when the New York Times said that Ted Cruz's new book wouldn't be on the bestseller list, claiming that Cruz and his publisher had somehow cheated with "bulk purchases"? Somebody backed down. Cruz's memoir, "A Time For Truth," will appear at No. 7 on the Times' list for hardcover nonfiction, reflecting its second-week sales, a Times spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday. The Texas senator's book had not been included on the list for its first week, on the grounds that its sales had been driven by "strategic bulk purchases." "This week's NYT best seller list was arrived at using the same process as last week's - and the week before that," Murphy wrote. "That process involves a careful analysis of data, and is not influenced in any way by the content of a book, or by pressure from publishers or book sellers." Both HarperCollins, the book's publisher, and Amazon, the largest Internet retailer in the country, said last week that they had found "no evidence" that bulk purchases drove the book's sales numbers. On Friday, Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler accused the Times of "obvious partisan bias," and called on the paper to reveal its methodology or else publicly apologize. The Times has resolutely stood by its claim, and has refused to reveal its methodology on the grounds that doing so might threaten the integrity of the process. People have argued for a while now that the bestseller lists are drifting away from what books are actually selling the best . . . and toward which ones the list creators think ought to be considered best-sellers: NYT keeps a tight lid on their process for selecting best sellers. They sample their own list of certain book sellers across the country, which is a tightly guarded secret, and then look at the data with their wise NYT brains and decide who they think should be on the list. It's said this is done to keep people from gaming the system, which is partially true. But it's also done so that the New York Times can have a say on which books get the extra credibility of being a best seller. According to a 2013 Forbes article, a sufficiently wealthy author could buy his way onto the bestseller lists -- it depends if you have an extra $250,000 lying around or so. (Neither Cam nor I have that, so pre-orders are appreciated. I see we're down to $21.27 now.) Speaking of books . . . Code of Conduct Is Brad Thor's The Empire Strikes Back Here's my two-word review of Brad Thor's Code of Conduct : Holy @#*$! One of the challenges of the thriller genre is giving your audience what it wants -- a tale of thrills, chills, brave heroes, nefarious villains, chases, action, suspense, oftentimes a sense of realism or inside information -- and making it all seem new. Perhaps the biggest challenge for an author is giving the audience what they want -- a happy ending, or at least a satisfying ending -- without making it feel too tidy or unrealistic. If we know that the hero is going to come out okay, and the damsel in distress will be rescued . . . there's less dramatic tension. Readers want that sense of danger that things may not turn out okay . . . but the moment the terrorist blows up the school bus or shoots the dog, the tone of the story changes completely. In recent years, we've seen creators become a little more willing to take risks in storytelling, ending their tales with their heroes having not completely succeeded and suffering losses -- in part, I suspect, a reflection of America real-life experience with high-stakes battles with evil men since 9/11. When we pick up a thriller or tune in to an action movie or show, we want affirmation that the righteous and brave can ensure justice is done -- but we know if we're getting wish-fulfillment. We're looking for a legend of heroic victory we can believe in. I remember watching the second season of 24 when the show featured a sequence where the bad guys had left a bomb in the good guys' headquarters. [SPOILER ALERT, but come on, it's been more than a decade.] Jack Bauer found out about it, called it in and had his bosses order the building evacuated . . . and then, as we saw Counter-Terrorism Unit employees heading to the door, KABOOM. Not everybody made it out. Sara Gilbert's character, who we had been led to think was a new regular character, was killed. The creators sent a clear message to the audience: The good guys aren't always going to win and the stakes can be very high. (Even more dramatically, one of the later seasons featured Valencia, California getting nuked by terrorists.) Showtime's Homeland picked up the baton of I-can't-believe-they-did-that twists; Carrie Matheson and her team rarely get clean wins and sometimes get blindsided by catastrophic attacks. And obviously, HBO's Game of Thrones has raised the bar in killing off fan favorites and heroic protagonists. The opening scene -- nay, the opening paragraph -- of Code of Conduct makes very clear, the you-know-what is hitting the fan. The question is not whether Thor's recurring hero, former Navy SEAL-turned-private-sector-counterterrorism Scot Harvath, can save the day. The day is pretty much shot. The question is what's going to be left to be saved. We flash back a week, to Harvath's mission to investigate an attack on a charity hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the road to the near-apocalyptic mess begins . . . Past Thor novels had the intriguing format of giving you a fast-paced thriller, and then stopping for about one chapter as a character gives an expository monologue explaining a fascinating lesson on some topic on Thor's mind -- the unnervingly prescient examination of domestic surveillance in Black List, the strange history of the Federal Reserve in Hidden Order, the utter ruthlessness of Chinese military strategic thinkers in Act of War. There's no stand-alone "here's some history" chapter in Code of Conduct; the theme of wariness of the United Nations and what we used to call "progressive transnationalism" is woven throughout the book and story. Brad Thor endorsed Rick Perry, and the author's conservative perspective is clear but never heavy-handed. Thor was kind enough to offer a fantastic blurb for The Weed Agency, and there's a short section about the self-interested mentality of the federal bureaucracy. In fact, the wise mentor character in Code of Conduct observes, "At this point in history, there's no greater power than that of the American bureaucrat," and I nearly squealed. There's also some unnerving and sometimes funny realism. As Guy Benson noticed, at one point our friend Larry O'Connor of Washington-area news-talk station WMAL pops up on the radio discussing the rapidly-worsening crisis . . . 
and if you can stand a spoiler . . . we don't know if Larry O'Connor makes it! Code of Conduct isn't just another great thriller novel from Thor; it's got some twists and revelations that punch the reader in the gut. It's a bit darker than the preceding novels. The bad guys have a big head-start, the good guys are playing catch-up, and big institutions fail to live up to their duties to protect the public -- perhaps a reflection of the real-life failures in the Department of Homeland Security, TSA, the Office of Personnel Management, and the NSA's runaway snooping . . . By the final pages, Harvath has fought as bravely and tenaciously as ever, but the future seems particularly uncertain and ominous. Somehow, it's a fittingly chilling vibe for the week of the Iran deal. A bit of background about Brad Thor: So he switched majors to creative writing and after college, Thor packed up his computer and headed to France to live with a friend and write his great novel. Before long, though, he sent the computer back and just traveled all around Europe. And not for nothin'. Thor eventually parlayed that trip into his very own public television show, "Traveling Lite," in 1994. Here's an extraordinarily young, very mid-90s-coiffed Brad Thor in that Traveling Lite program: 
ADDENDA: For some of you, I will see you on the cruise. For those of you not going, if tradition holds, the National Review gang will be sailing off to some Caribbean sites about a week after the 2016 elections . . . check nrcruise.com for details in the not-too-distant future. This week's edition of the pop-culture podcast looks at the trailers of Comic-Con; whether social media should be your guide for health advice; the appeal of midseason baseball, Wimbledon, and the ESPYS; and a special guest offering a despicable assessment of the Minions movie, This week's show is brought to you by . . . Wayne Enterprises. As their promotional brochure declares, "You may know us for our military contracts, or maybe you've heard some wild tales about the nightlife of the man who inherited our company. But under CEO Lucius Fox, we've made dramatic expansions in our cellular technology, motor vehicle, and aerospace divisions -- now with autopilot! Wayne Enterprises: There's no riddle to the secret of our success -- we're the cat's meow. Remember, our rivals may say they're serious, but we know they're just a bunch of jokers."  | 
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