Whether he's writing a 300-page novel or an 800-word column, Christopher Buckley's rules of satirical engagement seem to be straightforward: Work quickly and swing at everything that moves.

He's not a street fighter, though. He's looking for lighthearted laughs, not ruthless knockouts.

Buckley's new novel, "Supreme Courtship," earns laughs and even lands a few solid punches, but it meanders more than one might expect from the author of "Little Green Men" and "Thank You for Smoking."

It certainly has a good hook, though.

Shortly after the aging Supreme Court Associate Justice J. Mortimer Brinnin shows up for oral arguments wearing aluminum-foil earmuffs (to drown out the whispering ghost of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), a position opens up on the bench.

President Donald P. Vanderdamp dutifully nominates a distinguished appellate judge, whom the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee promptly shoots down, on the tenuous grounds that as a child the nominee thought parts of the movie adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" were boring.

Vanderdamp's second nominee, a New York State Court of Appeals judge, fails to pass muster as well, for a simple reason. The committee chairman, Dexter Mitchell, wants the job himself.

While searching for the Bowling Channel at Camp David, Vanderdamp comes up with a brilliant scheme to subvert Mitchell's judiciary ambitions. He will nominate the woman whose reality show, "Courtroom Six," is ranked No. 7 in the country. The fact that she is no longer a real judge doesn't bother him -- or the country, as it turns out.

Pepper Cartwright has enough Texas charm and straight-talking swagger -- not to mention good looks -- to render naysayers mute. As her future husband, a TV producer, noted approvingly at their first encounter, "Sassy, flippant, sexy."

Faced with Cartwright's overwhelming popularity, the Senate approves her nomination, 91-7 (with two abstentions). In the meantime, her TV show climbs to the top of the ratings.

It's a nice bit of satire, but it only carries us halfway through the novel.

For the rest of the book, Buckley diversifies his novelistic portfolio. He follows Cartwright onto the bench, where she quickly runs into trouble (as well as stumbling into an affair with a fellow judge), and he keeps tabs on Vanderdamp's less-than-enthusiastic re-election campaign. (Its slogan: "More of the same.")

He also gives Mitchell a second act as a TV actor portraying a macho president named Mitchell Lovestorm. Inevitably, the show's popularity swells the senator's head, and he launches a real-life White House campaign against Vanderdamp. His TV wife campaigns at his side.

"You can't tell anymore what's real and what isn't," Vanderdamp complains to his chief of staff. "Everything's all jumbled. The world has been reduced to a widescreen TV."

"Supreme Courtship" is funny, but on the madcap-comedy scale, it's more Frank Capra than Marx Brothers. And like any good Capra movie (or Buckley novel), nobody really gets hurt.
Doug Childers is a Richmond writer and edits WAG, a literary Web site at www.thewag.net.