Fake Political Campaigns

The crowd pleasing full contact sporting competition I like to call the "Presidential Race" has gotten a lot less amusing now that the presidential candidate field has been winnowed down to two presumptive nominees. We can all look forward to five months of the "he said - I'm disappointed he said that - I didn't say that, why are you distorting my record?" cycle.

Also, McCain and Obama are both too polished and, frankly, too polite, to let any real zingers fly. And there's so much $$ being spent on '08 that I doubt the machers in either party will allow things to go off the rails.

What I'm amazed about, though, it the apparent lack of joke candidates. When I was growing up, every four years the great cultural icons of the moment (usually advertising spokesmen, sometimes popular TV characters) would run gag-presidential campaigns. You don't see that anymore. What gives?

So here's my rundown of some of my favorite fake political campaigns from the past:

1. Bill the Cat.

Bloom County is my favorite all time comic strip. I still have my "Don't Blame Me, I voted for Bill and Opus" t-shirt. Do you?

2. Spuds McKenzie.



Apparently Anheuser-Busch is trying to hide the evidence, since I can't seem to locate a "Spuds for President" screenshot or video clip anywhere.

3. Randee of the Redwoods









Remember this guy? He ran a grass roots (okay, AstroTurf) campaign in '87, captured the youth vote, and lost out on the VP nod to Lloyd Bentsen by just a few hundred votes.

4. Brewster's Millions



Great, great flick with Richard Pryor and John Candy. If only more voters heeded his words and voted "none of above" on election day, we'd live in a very different world.

5. Dennis Kucinich










Seriously, did even his chippie wife think he had a shot?

6. Heywood Jablome










1983 candidate for president of the student counsel, Edmund Muskie Junior High School, Kearney, New Jersey. Lost to Anita Bath in a landslide.

I Got Dumped For Obama

My cousin's friend made this video and posted it on YouTube:



Sure, it's a riff-off of the ObamaGirl video, but there's room in our politics for creative borrowings. Don't believe me? Compare:

President Bush, 2004: "Yes, America Can!"

Candidate Obama, 2008: "Yes, We Can!"

Now that's change we can believe in.

UPDATE: Actually, the chic in the video is my own cousin, Rachel Keller. I don't see much of the Kellers ... who'd of thunk it?

Daily Kos Mocks McCain's Teeth

In a single post, the Daily Kos today manages to make an issue out of John McCain's hair and teeth. Both cheap shots imply something else about the candidate ... he's just to darn old to be president.

I wonder how the left wing of the Democratic Party would react if, say, Fox News mocked Obama's hair and teeth to imply something critical about one of his, shall we say, immutable characteristics?

You stay classy there, Kos.

She's Out (Maybe)

Via Yahoo ... Hillary aides have announced she may concede the delegate count after today's primaries. It all depends upon what your definition of "concede" is.

UPDATE:

Maybe not. Clinton surrogate Terry McAuliffe calls reports of her conceding "100% incorrect." She's Out! She's In! She's Out! She's just like Ann Hetche!

Primary Finale

Here it is, your once-in-a-lifetime political occurrence; the day when the South Dakota and Montana primaries make national headlines. Enjoy!

Tracking the mega-narrative split among Democratic primary voters, experts say the American Indian vote is split. Are they even allowed to vote in the general election?

Meanwhile, everyone's predicting The Hill TM will drop out after tonight? And the WSJ reports that she told staffers to report to New York for the big end-of-primary season party but to expect to pay their own bus fair home. Gee, you'd think the Clintons could spring for a several hundred bus tickets for those staffers still deluded enough to buy the crap after all these years ... any doubt they won't even stock top shelf booze at the party tonight?

Top Seven VP Picks for Senator McCain

With Obama looking ready to wrap up the Democratic nomination after tomorrow's Oregon primary, the MSM's turning to reporting the next important topic of beltway speculation: Who is going to be John McCain's pick for the VP slot?

Frankly, with all off the flotsam that has accumulated during Barack's primary fight with Hillary (Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Michelle Obama, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, Hamas, et. al.), McCain could name a pet rock as his VP and still win the general election. But just in case the McCain team hasn't decided, I though I'd offer the Sherman Square pundit's top picks:

1. Former NY Governor George Pataki – A good looking, relatively charismatic and scandal-free centrist Republican. He can help McCain with the historically true-blue northeast vote. And putting him on the 2008 ticket will prevent Pataki from being tempted to launch a rescue effort to recapture the NY governor’s seat from trainwreck-in-waiting Gov. David Paterson.

2. Robert Downey Jr. – The New York Times recently reported that Downey may be a secret conservative (NYT registration required). True or not, his $100.8 million opening weekend for Ironman proves he can at least play a sucessful and muscular capitalist force for good. Plus, the movie star and indie film maverick can help McCain capture the ex-brat pack vote, been-to-prison celebrity vote, grown- men-who-still-read-comic-books vote, the male-hookers-for-coke-money vote, and the all important not-afraid-to-do-blackface vote.



3. Barack Obama – Always keep 'em guessing. Plus, Obama would be a good choice just for the Rovian pleasure of seeing Maureen Dowd perform compositional acrobatics as she explains why adding Barack Obama to the ticket proves once-and-for-all that all Republicans are unabashedly racist.

4. Jack Donaghy - We were pretty upset when CEO Don Geiss fell into a coma just hours before announcing to the Board that Jack would be his hand-picked replacement. Now Jack's stuck in a no-end office deep inside the Beltway while Geiss' flamboyantly gay son-in-law Devon Banks runs the show. Jack is credentialed to the hilt - "bow hunting Polar Bear, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, once driving a rental car into the Hudson River to practice escaping, showering with Greta Van Susteren and, claimed to have overcome a peanut allergy through sheer willpower." And, like McCain, he's got experience reaching across the aisle ... usually to get his arm around scandalicious Senator C.C. Cuningham (D. Vt).

Bonus: Naming Donaghy to the VP slot may prevent Jack’s real life alter-ego, limousine liberal Alec Baldwin, from pontificating on his wacko-theories of government in the pages of Vanity Fair for at least a couple more months.

5. Erica Rose Campbell – This busty Playboy and Penthouse model with a smile of gold and a farmer's daughter charm has renounced the world of cheesecake and found Jesus (links may be NSFW). Her recent emergence as a Born Again Christian would help bolster McCain’s appeal among the Pat Robertson / Ralph Reed set that keeps threatening to stay home on election day. Needless to say, if Obama with his shirt off can pull co-eds away from MySpace and Facebook, Erica with her shirt off could lock-up what pundits are calling the single most important voting block in the 2008 election: heterosexual men with a pulse. Plus, McCain has an opportunity to show real bi-partisanship here, as the opposition research should be a real cinch (she's already been worked over, and we've got the pictures to prove it).

Bonus: Erica for VP just might cause Gloria Steinam’s head to explode in a fit of feminist pique.

6. General Tarkin – Every Republican president needs his Fixer – the guy who hides dead bodies, launders the kickback cash, stages the photographs of political opponents saluting the North Korean flag while feasting on the barbequed corpses of endangered artic seals. Nixon had G. Gordon Liddy. Regan had Oliver North. Bush has Dick Cheney. Of course, Cheney will be a tough act to follow. I can think of no one better for McCain than the Imperial commander of the Death Star. This is a guy who, despite possessing no discernable hand-to-hand combat powers or familiarity with The Force, is so jaw-dropingly evil that he can haughtily boss around Darth Vader in a conference room full of subordinates and walk away totally unscathed.

Bonus: He makes McCain look young in comparison.




7. Trogdor the Burninator – Actually, Trogdor would be a pretty terrible choice. Virtually no on-camera charm. And what's with the arm coming out of his back? Trogdor would alienate almost every conceivable segment of the electorate. But I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to this YouTube clip, so what the hell. (Hat tip: Chance Bliss).

Not the Best Poker Player in the House

Less than a week after she eked a minor victory in the Indiana primary (where she announced that she had joined the John Birch Society wing of the Democratic Party), Clinton has adopted a new strategy to secure the presidential nomination:

Yup. The pundits all agree. She's played the RACE CARD. And wow, for a veteran, did she flub it. See MSNBC's take here. And the New York Post's take here. And the New York Daily News. And over at the WSJ Online, pundit-licious Peggy Noonan.

What to say that hasn't already been said? I defer to Kenny Rogers:

You've got to know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
know when to walk away
know when to run.

Who knew? All this time, the Gambler was actually a metaphor for the topsy turvy world of a 21st century presidential campaign!

Thanks to RighsideVA for the "race card" image.

But She's Really, Really Needs It

David Kahane at NRO has a knock-down metaphor-ladden piece on Hillary that pretty accurately fairly captures the Clintonista dynamic that is being inflicted on us by (who else?) the Clintonistas. How many metaphors? A quorum. A plethora. In short, more than metaphors than China has nipples.

Those Wall Street Money Brokers

The New York Post reports today that Senator Hillary Clinton announced that she knows who’s to blame for our current economic woes: Wall Street money brokers. Get the full quote here:

"I stood up to Wall Street, calling on them to take responsibility for their role in the home mortgage crisis ... Why don't we hold these Wall Street money brokers responsible for their role in this recession?" [emphasis added].

Hmmmmm.

The former first lady (two times) and the junior senator represents the Empire State, where the financial services sector (“Wall Street”) accounts for 20% of the state’s total revenue. She is a former partner of the Rose Law Firm - a firm whose practice includes complex commercial business transactions and whose website boasts the Coolidgesque mission statement: “The needs of business are our primary concern.” She has sat on the board of Fortune 500 companies such as Wal-Mart. Her husband has partnered with perhaps a half dozen private equity shops, investment funds and consulting firms. Her daughter is a former McKinsey consultant and now works at the hedge fund Avenue Capital. Where I work, we call all of those professional and familial contacts with the financial system “institutional knowledge”.

The point being, she’s well positioned to know that there is no such thing as a money broker. Stock broker? Check. Mortgage broker? Sure. Insurance broker? Yeah, why not.

But there simply aren’t any money brokers on Wall Street. There aren’t any on Main Street, either. No one with an ounce of financial acumen uses the term "money broker."

Now let me think. When did we last hear about money brokers?


So we have a would-be president shucking her way through the cornfields of Indiana, tellin’ them farmers who to blame for their troubles (nevermind that corn is up 60% since 2005). Maybe we can find a better image to illustrate the point.

Well, I'm certainly glad that problem has been solved. Now where is my passport and suitcase?

Final point: lest you think I'm being a little over-sensitive, Hillary chose her words very carefully here. How carefully? Carefully enough that her campaign put out a correction last night when she was originally misquoted as saying "money grubbers" instead of "money brokers."