Published: October 09, 2008 11:29 am            

The Candidates

As I write this rant, I am looking forward to the second presidential debate. I thought a “fair and balanced” assessment of the campaign and the candidates from yours truly would be appropriate at this time, so here goes.

First of all, there are several givens we must accept in order to assess the candidates properly. Some of these truisms are: Politicians have three kinds of memory — good memory, bad memory, and convenient memory; Don’t be too impressed with statistics — they are just a bunch of numbers looking for an argument; When they give you four reasons for doing something, the real reason is usually none of the four. When a politician starts a statement with, “In retrospect…,” he really means, “Boy, was I stupid!” Prejudice is another labor-saving device — it enables you to form opinions without having to deal with the facts. It is much easier to squelch a bold-faced lie than it is to deal with a half-truth

Unfortunately, all the candidates seem to operate under the credo that anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for. I feel that mudslinging is a bad thing, Mr. Candidate, and, even if you don’t hit anything, you will still end up with dirty hands. Remember, blowing out someone else’s candle does not cause yours to shine any brighter.

John McCain is a true American hero who portrays himself as a Teddy Roosevelt rough-riding maverick who is going to take on the Washington establishment (of which he is a senior member) and reform it. Well, good luck with that. Maybe he really is tough enough to “git’r done.” His candidacy for this high office shows that he has come a long way from his Naval Academy days when his code of honor was, “Don’t ever be first, don’t ever be last, and don’t volunteer for anything!” John likes to quip that his miserable five years in the Hanoi Hilton was caused by his violation of a standard fighter pilot’s rule which says, “It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.”

One thing he has going for him is that he was always taught to respect his elders and most of his elders are long gone. He says this is an advantage because he has no peer pressure to deal with. When he sets that jaw and softly says, “My friends…” he sounds like a cross between Jesse Ventura and “The Godfather.” I can picture him sitting in a dimly lit oval office speaking to a group of influential lobbyists. He would softly mutter something like, “My friends, I feel your pain and I am pleased that you have come to me in your hour of need. Because you have shown me this respect, your problems now become my problems and your enemies become my enemies and will soon be made an offer they cannot refuse.”

Poor Barack Obama is a good looking, glib, and inspiring man, but he is painfully thin. When he drinks tomato juice he looks like a thermometer. As he travels around the country on the “rubber chicken circuit,” he needs to make sure he gets plenty of chicken fried steak, French fries, lard biscuits, all smothered in that white gravy that clots on the plate.

Obama’s experience as a “community organizer” seems very relevant to the job he is seeking. A community organizer tries to transform unorganized confusion into regimented chaos and get people to do what they already should be doing. Sounds like just what we need in Washington. His experience as a community organizer in those tough Chicago neighborhoods belies the claim by some that he is not tough enough to be President. I mean those neighborhoods were really tough and mean. You might ask how tough were they? They were so tough that Eliot Ness patrolled the school crossings and the ice cream truck played “Helter-Skelter.”

A man named Thomas Marshall said, “Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea and the other was elected Vice President — and nothing was ever heard from either again.” We have two stellar candidates for this position and they intend to be much more involved in the affairs of state than just giving graduation speeches and attending state funerals.

Is it just my imagination or does Sarah Palin look exactly like the model in the Lenscrafters ads? As she would say, “Yah, you betcha! Ya know, it makes me all the more popular with the Joe Six-packs, gun dealers, and hockey players around the country.” Here’s a trivia question for you. Did you know that, when they elect the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, they do it by radio? That’s right. Back in 1996, Sarah was elected mayor because she was the fifth caller.

Actually, Sarah did rather well in her only debate of the campaign, but that was after a week of intense coaching while sequestered up at the McCain ranch in East Cupcake, Arizona. She had to be reprogrammed from some of the pronouncements she made while campaigning in Alaska. Here are a few examples of the special training: “You must stop saying that an assault rifle is good for hunting — that’s like saying a chain saw is good for cutting butter! Do not make the statement that, if everyone lived by the rule of eat what you kill, there would be less drive-by shootings. Sarah, for the last time, no matter what kind of sweetheart deal you and Vladimir Putin worked out, we are not going to build a bridge from the Aleutian Islands to the Kamchatka Peninsula!”

Could Joe Biden’s teeth and hair be any whiter? I think his bouffant comb-over turned white due to the trauma of all those transplants years ago. When he smiles (and he smiles a lot), those ivories fairly glisten. Joe has been involved in domestic and international politics for a long time and is finally starting to learn that choosing what you say is much wiser than saying what you chose. He has become diplomatic enough to say John McCain has an open mind when he really means he has a hole in his head.

See ya later…

—————

Dick Platt is a Daily Sun columnist. His column appears on Thursdays.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.