Parsing The Candidates
Of course it’s election season. The die has been cast, and broken, and used again anyway. I know they’ll keep counting ballots until their Kyoceras run out of toner, but it appears the results won’t shift much, so I feel safe to weigh in on the election, so my readers can understand how I arrive at an electoral strategy.
I tried something new this year. Normally, I simply take my ill-considered opinions into the voting booth and vote against all sorts of people. I never vote for anyone. I feel that only encourages them. Politicians should always feel that every ballot is filled out with the off hand pinching the nostrils. If they feel you’re enthusiastic about them, instead of just settling for them, they do things like invade Poland. But this year I wanted to vote, just once, for someone. I wanted to feel that surge of self-satisfaction that others enjoy when they’re filling out ballots for a favored son, even if they’re just filling out absentee ballots for comatose nursing home denizens.
This proved difficult. I don’t know a lot of politicians. I can’t remember if they shake babies and kiss hands, or the other way around. I can’t seem to recall which ones are for being against, and which are against being for. I knew I’d need to bone up to make an informed decision. And I’m not much of a boner.
So I decided to simply drive around, and count the number of signs by the side of the road. More signs must mean the candidate would be better at excoriating the Federal Reserve bank for their insistence on using paper instead of doubloons, or taunting midgets in sweatclothes into fighting the Russian army. On the local level, more signs would indicate more brothers-in-law who could help you run the the motor vehicle department more efficiently by not showing up for work very often. Numbers aren’t everything in this scheme, however. I also ranked them on their choice of fonts. How else are you supposed to decide who’s fly and who’s wack?
It was a tough go. There were a lot of signs. Lots. The circus used to be more circumspect about touting themselves. And they were all jumbled together on lawns and intersection islands. It was hard to tell who hated who by the signs alone. Once upon a time, you could tell the political parties by simply observing the color of the text. Red team was always for things like annexing the Sudetenland, and blue team was for five year plans for the collective farms you’d be living in. There were also political garanimal clues. If there was an elephant label in their underwear, they wanted Mexicans to mow their lawns, but not vote. A donkey in their underoos wanted the Mexicans to vote, but not pester them in the Home Depot parking lot.
I noticed people running for the senate using only their first name on their signs. This seemed a trifle familiar to my ear, er, eye. I always picture senators wearing, if not togas, at least a clip on tie, and being somewhat serious. When I vote for a senator, I prefer a triple-barreled name to make my choice seem more important. Serial killers and senators should always have a middle name, not just a Christian name and a surname. Bonus points would be awarded if the middle name is Wayne. All serial killers seem to have Wayne as their middle name. It lends an air of seriousness to their affairs. Senators kill at least as many people, so they should try to keep up. They should put their confirmation name on their posters, instead of touting themselves on posters like they’re Cher or Madonna or Mussolini or something.
There were a lot of signs for a Harris/Walz ticket. No other information or clues was added to their posters, just their names, so I had to guess what kind of politicians they were. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that both Richard Harris and Christopher Waltz are fine actors, but I was unsure they’d make efficient administrators at the federal level. I was doubly suspicious in this regard because Waltz allowed so many signs to be printed with his name misspelled. Forgetting little things like that are the sort of thing that gets you embroiled in wars in Korea. Just ask Dean Acheson. Others might object to Richard Harris because he’s a foreigner, and dead, but neither of those things is an impediment to voting, so I don’t see why it should disqualify you from serving a term or two in office.
There was some other fellow named Trump Vance running, and he had a lot of signs. I think his only claim to fame was being a descendant of the actress who played Ricky and Lucy’s downstairs neighbor back in the fifties on cathode-ray television. I had nothing else to go on but his pedigree. The press has been entirely mum about him.
There were many hyphenated women running for various offices. Their signs reminded me of spelling class in the first grade, where you’d start writing your name and run out of room for the last three letters in your last name. My wife doesn’t like to squint at male stripper shows, and I don’t like squinting at political Burma-Shave signs, so I wasn’t going to cast a vote for any of them.
But there was one guy I felt was the man for the job. I wasn’t sure what job, because his yard sign only contained his first and last name. But I figured a man with that amount of moxie, who could simply put his name out there on his yard signs, no other clues, had the self-assurance I appreciate in an executive at any level. He didn’t have anywhere near the number of signs as any of the other candidates, but their rarity just made them more memorable, like a wart on the end of a stripper’s nose. He was my guy.
His name wasn’t pre-printed anywhere on the ballot, another sign of his supreme confidence, I thought. I wasn’t even sure what position he was running for, so I wrote it in next to every race on the ballot. I was proud and happy to vote for Douglas Roofing for everything. I’m not sure if he won, but if he did, he should thank the guy that printed his signs. And me, of course.
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