I Dive Now Deep Into the Functional Ambivalent Archives...

...to a time when this wasn't really even a blog.  It was just kind of a test to see if it wanted to be a blog over on Blogspot that I wrote for a while.  I was checking to see if I wanted to be a blogger before I told anyone I had a blog, and one of the things I wrote back then is relevant now.  Why?  Because there are continued rumblings that Dick Cheney is going to run for President.

Here are excerpts from the thing:

I've figured out how to handicap the Presidential election. No, really, I have. I know who's going to win, and I have a sure-fire way to know who's going to win not only this presidential election but every presidential election until, oh, about 2040.

The person who wins will be the person most Americans would rather party with. 

No kidding; do the math. We've turned into a party nation. Our basic needs are covered, and even our poor are fat and have color TVs. We're all about the weekend, and the weekend is all about the party, no matter what form the party takes. What we don't want is a President Buzzkill who's going to go all weepy on us just because a few losers can't get their shit together enough to have a life.

Would there ever in a million years be more of a President Buzzkill than growly, old, about-to-keel-over-dead Dick Cheney?

Whether we know it or not, that's how we make our decisions come election day. Look at every election dating back to Nixon. We invariably elect the person we'd most like to party with.

Who would you rather party with: Ronald Reagan or Walter Mondale? Reagan, hands down. Red-nosed story-teller, does a great Irish accent, laughs out loud without a moment's hesitation. Reagan's so much fun he makes even his ossified Hollywood crowd seem like the Rat Pack. I'd belly up to a bar with him any day. Mondale? Two beers, max. Two beers and I'd be looking around for a way out. Not a bad guy, really, but if there's no one around who's any more fun than Mondale, I think maybe I'll call it a night.

George H.W. Bush or Mike Dukakis? This one's tougher, for a couple of reasons. First of all, G.H.W. Bush is the kind of preppie who gets a little tanked up and wants to sing in harmony, which is something I don't go for. Plus, I'm thinking Dukakis's wife, Kitty, knew her way around a game of Truth or Dare. I bet in her jewelry box there are beads she earned fair and square in New Orleans. All the same, you've got to go with Bush as the safe choice because Mike has these tendencies to lapse into a statistical analysis of traffic patterns.

Then Clinton beats G.H.W. Bush no sweat. The 1992 election was like the scene in "Animal House" where John Belushi sits down at the cafeteria table with the clean-cut boys from the Beta House. While Preppie-in-Chief Bush looks on in appalled horror, life-of-the-party Bill blasts mashed potatoes all over the perky bosoms of the nearby cheerleaders. Of course we elected Bill Clinton twice. We did it for the same reason "Animal House" is still a staple of Saturday night reruns. We love this stuff. Who wouldn't want to party with Bill for eight years? He's like Reagan but without a conscience. To have fun with Clinton, all you'd have to do is maintain a legally defensible distance and let the action come to you.

Clinton and Bob Dole? Bob's hilarious, in a snarly kind of way, and you definitely want to have him around when something snide needs to be said to the snobby girls at the next table. But he's not the leader of the party pack, and Clinton is, so Clinton won again.

Al Gore and George W. Bush? Again, even sober Bush is tons more fun that Gore. And back in the President's drunk-driving days...this is a man who has not only been to a strip joint, but knows how to deliver a generous tip using only his teeth. You want to know what's in the National Guard Record that keeps Carl Rove up at night? It's not the spotty attendance; we already know the future President took the Guard seriously only as a means of avoiding going to Vietnam. No, somewhere in the long-lost personnel files of 1st Lt. George Bush there's something that would make the President intolerable to the religious right. Say, a brawl at an off-base sporting house.

The Democrats are now in the process of nominating John Kerry. Anyone want to party with Senator Kerry? Anyone? Well, maybe for a while, if his wife picks up the bar tab. But come the critical midnight hour, when legends are made, I'm heading off in search of someone a little more little more like President George, who's out back packing people into his Range Rover to go drive across lawns in that new subdivision out by the Interstate.

I would add this: Can anyone out there imagine Vice President Cheney having any kind of fun at all that wasn't mean and, ultimately, regretable?  Oh, yeah, pushing a beer bottle into the spokes of a wheelchair so the poor guy can only go around in circles or calling in an airstrike on his arch-rival's new sports car...that I can see.  But knocking back a few and telling the kind of off-color jokes that made Drew Carey famous and get people elected President?  I don't think so.

The problem on the other end is, of course, that the core attribute for survival among Democrats is earnest sincerity.  There's not a one of the front runners who'd make a normal person feel like staying out past 9 o'clock at night.  It's so bad that I've heard serious Democrats talk about running Kerry again, apparently because he was so much fun the first time around.

And no, I'm not giving anyone the URL to the old site.  It's embarrassing.

Comments

[Jim]

I think you have nailed it. It's sad but true that our presidential elections have become nothing more than a popularity contest. Democrats have to come up with another charismatic candidtate like Clinton but for the life of me, I don't know who fits the bill.