"I wanna be ELECTED!"

I will admit that I pay less attention to the quadrennial presidential frenzy than I probably should. While I can name most (probably not all--how many of them ARE there?) of the GOP candidates and all one of the Democratic candidates, and while I’ve read countless news accounts and editorial discussions in the aftermath of the endless debates among the former, I still cannot pin down exactly why any of them chose to throw their hats into the proverbial ring. Why does Michele Bachmann want to be president, for instance, aside from “God told me to do it”? What does Rick Perry see himself as offering the country? Or baseball-glove out of Massachusetts, or the now nearly forgotten pizza guy, or salamander-serial-adulterer, or Ron “Methuselah was a KID” Paul. I admit I kind of like the Utah Mormon, Huntsman, but that may be as much because his daughters are a hoot as anything else.

I would love to ask every one of them, in a quiet, non-photo-op moment (if there were such a thing), WHY they, personally, not only want the job, but deem themselves qualified for it. Like that moment in the movie, “Blind Side,” when Michael turns the tables on the NCAA investigator, telling her that they want to know why everybody else wants him to go to Ole Miss, but not why HE wants to go there.

Why whatever percent of voters want Paul or Bachmann or Romney or Perry or Cain or Huntsman or whomever to become president (which mostly boils down to “anybody but the black guy” anyway) doesn’t interest me nearly as much as why that handful of people each individually want to become president.

Frankly, I sense that none of them really want the job.

Running for president has become less about becoming president, than merely the lucrative game of running itself. Heck, just tagging along as the vice-presidential candidate four years ago made Sarah Palin rich. She didn’t even have to bother going back to her original day job as Alaska governor. She has demonstrated that there are almost as many perks to being a presidential candidate, in however teasing a way, as to the job itself--plus none of the headaches.

Ron Paul apparently gave up his medical career to become a career politician and then a career presidential candidate. Near as I can tell, he “consistently” stakes out positions that will keep him “interesting” and “attractive” to just large enough a portion of the electorate to make him seem viable as a candidate, but not to large enough portion of same to make him actually likely to be elected.

It’s not the job, it’s the adventure, and the money and publicity that flow along with it.

As my own job seems threatened and my “career,” such as it is, in doubt, I’ve begun thinking about other lines of work. Running for president is starting to look like a pretty cool opportunity, and it’s not like I haven’t thought about it before. Back in the 1970s, here in Missouri, we had a guy run for governor, “Walkin Joe Teasdale,” who got the name because he actually perambulated on foot around the state, and eventually managed to beat the incumbent governor, Kit Bond, who came back to beat Walkin Joe four years later. I was in high school at the time, given to daydreams (always better than algebra or geometry), and one day I wondered what would happen if an 18-year-old Midwestern kid started walking across the country, announcing himself as a presidential candidate for the election 17 years hence. He could work odd jobs, talk to people, generally spend 17 years getting his name out. People would KNOW him, or think they did, and he would know people, his eventual constituency.

I never got much further with the story than that, but now I wonder.

Could there BE a better job than running for an office you know (and hope and pray) you’ll never win?

Guess you’ll have to ask Ron Paul or Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or . . . Whomever. Don’t ask B. H. Obama, though--he tried to pull off this “running” thing and actually won, much to his apparent chagrin and dismay.

VOTE MEDIAN PERSPECTIVE IN 2020!

A Modest Proposal

Newt Gingrich is a flippin’ genius.

Get rid of school janitors (well, at the poor schools), and let the poor 9- to 14-year-olds take over cleaning duties. It would teach them responsibility, get a little (presumably VERY little) money in their pockets, save the schools money . . . Everybody wins, right? If a few of the kids suffer life-ending or life-altering injuries, what the hey? We’ve got too many people in the country, anyway.

He may be onto something, but hasn’t quite gotten there yet. Let me help him along.

First of all, scrap this idea: Child labor laws were enacted for a lot of very good reasons. The “age limit” aspect, though, bears consideration.

After watching the so-called “Super Committee” in (in)action over the past few weeks, it occurs to me that we need to scrap the age minimums for our elected representatives. Instead of watching 12 “grown” men and women carp at each other, imagine putting a dozen 4-year-olds in the same room and letting them go at it. They would likely make just as much progress, and doubtlessly would be a lot more entertaining to watch.

Semi-seriously, I free-associated into wondering what would happen if you presented a “Budget Challenge” to high schools throughout the country? Schools would select 12 students, based solely on academic records, with maybe extracurricular activities as tie-breakers. Give them the same budget information that the Super Committee had to work with, then a semester or so to work out “deals.” At the end of the school year, each school’s proposed budget would be presented to a national panel of “adult” judges drawn NOT from Congress, but from a wider spectrum.

The budget with the most savings, with cuts and increases shared most equitably and with most clearly the best interests of America as a goal, would win.

The prize? Haven’t gotten that one figured out yet. Maybe the winning team would be given the option to select one lawmaker from each party to go at it, gladiator style, in, say, the Capitol building. Their weapons would be rubber swords, Nerf bats, and bubble-blow, and they would be wearing diapers (after a pre-bout meal liberally spiced with the laxative and the diuretic of their choice). The audience would be limited to congresspersons (mandatory attendance, plus mandatory sharing in the pre-bout meal), their staffers, lobbyists (may need to change the venue to a football stadium or Olympic arena to accommodate them all), Grover Norquist and Sarah Palin, as well as television crews, of course.

Plus Newt Gingrich.

Unfortunately, unless he gets elected to something (wasn’t he essentially driven out of Washington in disgrace, lo these many years ago?), he won’t be qualified for selection as a “gladiator.”

Salamander- or chameleon- or otherwise reptilian-boy Newt could handle the housekeeping duties after the fight, though. He would even share the same pre-bout meal and wear the same uniform as the combatants, with one minor change to differentiate him from them: A nice big letter “A” tattooed in scarlet ink on his back, just to remind us all of the moral high ground he occupies overlooking all of us.

But that would probably constitute "cruel and unusual" punishment (Nancy Pelosi in a diaper???  Jim Boehner???  Aaaarrrrgghh).  In the case of Congress and Newt, it is probably warranted.

If this gives you the impression that I've lost whatever respect I might ever have had (not much) for our legislators, you're very perceptive.