Oh Yeah? So How Come Gary Hart Was Never President?

Here's what we, as Democrats, get wrong: We think that candidates that speak loudly of high moral values should actually live according to those values, and we're shocked and outraged when A) they don't and B) sanctimonious Republicans don't seem bothered by the candidate's hypocricy.

Yeah, well, we're missing the point. Back before Functional Ambivalent was a real, grown-up blog, I developed a theory that, after all the political shouting is over, Americans generally elect as President the person they'd most like to party with. According to my theory, President Bush wasn't popular in spite of his youthful indiscretions, but because of his youthful indiscretions.

This theory is not as crackpot as you might believe. There is at least one card-carrying, degreed, professional historian who believes something similar, and discusses it in an article called "How Bush's Bad-Boy Image Helps." The historian's name is, for the record, Jim Sleeper, and he's a lecturer in Political Science at Yale, where he first met George W. Bush:

He had a certain charm about getting away with things, like DKE's custom of "branding" new members' on the butt, a less-than-noble tradition he managed to protect when it came under fire.

My Presidential Party Animal Theory didn't take into account any sort of butt play, but used instead elections for the last 40 years. I gave you (well, not actually you since I didn't have readers back then) as evidence a long string of elections where the political equivalent of the guy with the lampshade on his head won. My logic was pretty much typified by Clinton vs. GHW Bush.

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 Omega House. While Preppie-in-Chief Bush looks on in appalled silence, 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 (charming and fun) like Reagan but without a conscience. To have fun with Clinton, all you'd have to do is watch, maintain a legally defensible distance, and let the action come to you.

It is with that in mind that I note that President Bush is doing what he can to ice the coming election. Kitty Kelley, who once wrote a biography that described Frank Sinatra eating bacon and eggs off the stomoch of a naked stripper, is about to publish a book that claims W, then an advisor to his father, liked to snort a little blow to cut the boredom up at Camp David.

She quotes his former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: "Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either."

Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush "liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine".

Bush has admitted being an alcoholic but, asked during the 1999 election if he did drugs, he said: "I've told the American people that years ago I made some mistakes.

"I've learned from my mistakes and should I be fortunate enough to become president I will bring dignity and honour to the office."

Jeez. Driving drunk, brawling in college, and now doing a little toot on government property in voilation of about a thousand federal laws. This guy is a party-and-a-half.

There's another rumor that he helped a pregnant girlfriend get an abortion. If that turns out to be true, the President is going to be hard to beat.

Kerry, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly earnest. When he tries to crack a joke, it's about as funny as...well, as a Senator trying to crack a joke. He smiles at his own jokes not like he thinks they're funny, but with a sense of relief that he got safely through the punchline. Partying with him would be fun, sure, but only as long as his wife kept buying drinks. If she got tired and took her credit card to bed with her, it wouldn't be long before the crowd drifted away, leaving the Senator alone to discuss the merits of his plan to provide tax breaks for American companies that repatriate offshore capital.

So, given both my theory and the observtions of the official Yale historian, there seems to be only one way for Kerry to salvage this campaign: He needs to commit some horrifying moral indiscretion. My suggestion: He should get busted in a Mexican border town, drinking dollar margaritas while he waits for a lap dance. That ought to be enough to win the undecided vote and, quite probably, the election. If he gives only vague details about his "lost weekend" while promising he's over that stage of his life, he may even make inroads with the Christian right, earning a landslide.

But if he keeps playing it straight, he's toast.

That's just my theory. Keep in mind I've been wrong before.

Comments

[larry]

Christians are great. All you have to do is ask Jesus for forgiveness and they're down with you. To get the Christian right Kerry would have to deliver a bunch of Jesus talk. I think that would probably go over about as well as his jokes.

My personal favorite Bush partying moment is this video from The Smoking Gun. I love the way he tosses back his drink at the end.

So I guess that supports your theory.

[NewMexiKen]

Explain Nixon then.