Running for President

The Race of the Century

Republicans and Democrats seem to have adjusted well to the results of the last few presidential elections. Liberals and Conservatives, on the other hand, seem determined to convince one another that the other side attempted, one side successfully, to steal the election. Consequently, I don’t think it would be too far out of line to review the last few races for President from a slightly different perspective: It’s not who wins or loses. It’s how you run the race. It’s having fun when you run.

Liberals are losers. They shoot themselves in the foot before the race even begins. This alone should assure Conservatives of victory, but Conservatives are cruel. The minute the race begins, they shoot the Liberal candidate in the other foot. Then they trot along beside the Liberal continuing to shoot him in the foot as he crawls on his belly toward the finish line, all the while making fun of how ridiculous he looks and how clumsy he is. Sometimes the spectacle becomes so amusing the Liberal crosses the finish line while Conservatives are rolling on the ground in laughter. And a Liberal, quite accidentally, wins an election.

This is what happened in the race between President Bush the Elder and Bill Clinton. In fact, President Bush somehow offended the Conservatives early in the race, and they shot their own candidate in the foot. He still could have won, but he couldn’t hobble around them as they trotted along beside Clinton hilariously shooting him in the foot also. And so Bill Clinton won the election on his belly.

Furious at having lost to such a loser, the Conservatives continued to shoot at his left foot. Consequently, the now-President Clinton tended to put more weight on his good foot and so began to lean to the right. Since he tended to be right, he was not only a popular and successful president, he did something Liberals don’t often do. He solved a problem. Watching the Conservatives religiously pump bullet after bullet into that throbbing left foot, he suddenly realized what the source of his affliction was, and he found a solution. He banned guns.

That brings us to the next election. Clinton could not shoot himself in the foot, because guns were banned; and the Conservatives could no longer shoot him in the other foot, because they had no guns to shoot. So, no sooner had the race begun than the Conservatives ran onto the track pointing their fingers at President Clinton and shouting, “Bang! Bang! Bang!” That didn’t slow him down at all. He surged across the finish line. Bob Dole didn’t even make it from the start line. There were so many Conservatives on the track, he couldn’t move. They just ignored him and kept pointing their fingers at President Clinton yelling, “Bang! Bang! Bang!” When President Clinton crossed the finish line, and they realized that pointing their fingers and yelling, “Bang!” didn’t work as well as real guns, they went berserk and piled on the President, giving him a good thrashing.

This brings us to the last electoral race of the 20th century. The Conservatives were so busy beating up on President Clinton they didn’t even notice the race in progress. Consequently, they didn’t get in the way of George Bush the Younger as he raced along beside Al Gore. Unfortunately, Bush had a small impediment. He was a little backward. So his friends had to run along beside him telling him where the finish line was.

Meanwhile, Al Gore had his own problems. He kept tripping over his tongue. Normally, President Clinton would have run beside him holding his tongue to keep him from tripping over it, but President Clinton was busy being beaten up by the Conservatives. Al Gore could still have won the race easily. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. Or bite his tongue. He did neither. While Bush was running the race backward, Gore stumbled along beside him tripping over his tongue.

Since Bush was running backward, Gore should have won by a nose. In fact, the closer Gore got to the end of the race the longer his nose grew. Seeing this, the relatives of Bush ran to the finish line and attempted to move it farther away from that rapidly protruding proboscis. They succeeded in moving it away from Gore, but in doing so, skewed it toward Bush. Seeing that he had crossed the finish line and not realizing it was skewed and so not the real finish line, (remember, Bush was running backward and couldn’t see the real finish line) he stopped running and raised his arms in victory shouting, “I won!”

No one paid any attention, except the Liberal court, which ran onto the track and tried to wrest control of the line from Bush’s relatives. Being Liberals, they tripped over their own feet and succeeded only in skewing it more. As the finish line flashed beneath his feet for the second time, Bush forgot that he was standing still and cried again, “I won!” Still no one paid him any heed. Finally, in exasperation, the Conservative Court rushed onto the track and grabbed Bush, picked him up, and threw him across the real finish line. George W. Bush will long be remembered as the man who overflew the United States government.

Another electoral race was run and won. Did I mention that Liberals are losers? If I did not, let me make the point another way. The Electoral College reminds us that our government is a Democratic Republic. Our Republic is a collection of states. Our Democracy is a collection of people. We elect people near our home (the state we live in) to represent our state in selecting or electing the executive who will run the larger (national) government. This Electoral College is what protects us from a dictatorship selected by a favored few swayed by self-interest and from a dictatorship selected by an uninformed populace swayed by emotion.

The Republican part of our government makes America strong. Without it, we would lose our Democracy. The Democratic part of our government gives each voting citizen some control over those who govern and so protects our liberty and our rights to whatever extent we value those commodities. Democracy is the heart and soul of America. But without our Republic, Democracy would die from its own empathy. And if we do not properly understand our Democracy, it could be the vehicle that seriously weakens or even destroys our Republic.

With that thought, let the races continue. And, with a little luck, we may have many more as exciting as the one that has introduced us to this new millennium.