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You Can't Make Stuff Up Like This by Will Durst
Talking Veepstakes This seems like a good time to talk about the race for the vice presidency. Not because of the overwhelming excitement involved in what is essentially a backstage safari. And not because of the dazzling personalities being rigorously vetted. Because nothing else is going on. Right now, the Veepstakes is the only game in town. The presidential campaign has entered what can only be described as its dormant hibernation phase. The whole damn thing has stalled like John Goodman over the dessert table at a 4 star casino's Sunday Brunch on the Mississippi Coast. Think of an endlessly looping PBS pledge drive. The candidates have abandoned the playing field and are sucking down Gatorade while the trainers search for additional wads of cash to stuff into the hollow portions of their uniforms. And the score at halftime finds Barack Obama leading John McCain by about 15 points. Which should excite Democrats. I mean the last time they had this kind of a lead, at this point in the race, was way, way back, four years ago when John Kerry enjoyed a similar lead over George Bush. Oh. Meanwhile, welcome to silly season. To demonstrate their unity, former sworn mortal enemies, Senators Obama (Crips) and Clinton (Bloods) met up in a New Hampshire town named Unity where back in January, both received 107 votes. Get it? They're not at each other's throats anymore. They're in Unity. You can't make stuff up like this. And no, I have no idea if Truth or Consequences, New Mexico or Maggie's Nipples, Wyoming were considered as alternates in case the civic fathers of Unity proved truculent. We should relish these two months of campaign down-time before the conventions begin, and where just like now, absolutely nothing will happen. The only difference is then, that nothing will be reported upon at such a great length, that grown men are developing rashes on the insides of their thighs just thinking about it. Who will be number 2? Nobody knows. And we might not for a while. This time around the VP picks are undergoing prodigious scrutiny due to the peculiar vulnerability of each of the nominees. John McCain is old and could nod off at any time and Barack Obama is black and will have to campaign in America, a country more comfortable with guns than library cards. No word as to whether that whole library card thing is scheduled for any future Supreme Court docket. Both secondary races are wide open and the speculation is so thick you can hide small clusters of cherry tomatoes in the smoke coming out of Chris Mathews' ears. You got your public short list and you got your private shorter list and then you got your slip of paper with Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney's names on it, who only get the nod if every other politician in America co-incidentally trips and falls into an active lava tube. Some people say that the Vice President doesn't affect the general election. Maybe not, but the choice of the Vice President does have an impact. Do the names Eagelton, Ferraro, and Quayle have any meaning here? How bout Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perots's running mate in '92. "Who am I? Why am I here?" A question never adequately answered. For him or for us. Or for our current presumptive nominees. Politics Aren't Us Oh, man, it's a good thing I'm not a politician. For me. For you. For the planet Jupiter. Not just because I'd expend all my political capital attempting to get rid of that primitive custom known as bartime. And then try to roll back the scourge of those silly speed limit restrictions. I mean, what's the sense of selling Shelby Mustang GTs if you can't blow out the carbs once in a while? And what about society's unconscionably puritanical obsession with sex workers? Who's with me here? Hugh Grant? Eddie Murphy? Governor Spitzer? Senator Vitter? Somebody, back me up. You can't say I didn't give it a go, either. Politics, that is. Not prostitution. But then, they're easy to mix up. Back in '87, I ran for mayor of San Francisco. Spent $1500. Came in fourth out of 11. Got 2 percent of the vote. The three guys who beat me out each spent over a million dollars apiece. So on a dollar-per-vote basis, I am mayor of San Francisco. Of course, no matter what incentives were offered, those persnickety, math-obsessed electoral commissioners continually failed to come around to my way of thinking. I did learn a couple of things, such as when you yell out at candidate forums: "The hell you looking at?" most of your prospective constituents don't get the joke. Also, it turns out I have less patience dealing with total stone-crazed loonies than most octogenarians have with hard-plastic bubble packaging. Apparently, diplomacy and Durst go together like Picasso and popsicles. Like hardwood screws and garbage disposals. John Goodman and thongs. Cigarettes and Santa Monica. Hot dogs and opera. You get the picture. Oh sure, I've made a halfway decent living mocking and scoffing and taunting our various elected officials, but what most of us fail to appreciate are the necessary complement of specialized growths our beleaguered civil servants are forced to sprout. Slippery skills, like appearing way too happy to see people you don't even know. How to wear clothes so boring, tailors weep in your presence. Or saying stuff you don't really mean for fear of inflicting possible offense upon potential contributors you wouldn't be caught dead with in a zombie-infested chemical lab sub-basement, huddling from rampaging mutants. And yes, I am talking about pollsters.
Catch Durst's blog, "Atmosphere" coming from the 2008 Masters Tournament at masters.org. Or pre-order his new book, "The All American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing," available from Ulysses Press on May 1st. Visit Will Durst's site!
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