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All This For An
Office That Isn’t Even Round?
by Mad Dog
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If the candidates keep up this pace they stand to
collectively haul in about $924 million by election day. That’s $3 for
every man, woman, and child in the country, and $300,000 for each one of
them that cares. |
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When I was growing up I
was taught that good things come to those who wait, but this being the
21st — or next to last, according to Al Gore —century, that advice
has been replaced with “the sooner the better,” “there’s no time
like the present,” and “Isn’t there anything faster than instant
gratification?” That’s why it’s not surprising that it’s 18
months before the presidential election and we’re already in Massive
Candidate Overkill Mode.
Yes, I said 18 months. In spite of
how it feels, the election isn’t this November, it’s next November.
As in 2008. Yet already everyone you’ve ever heard of in politics has
thrown his or her hat into the ring, except of course those who aren’t
running but are just testing the waters by doing all the same things
those who are running are doing only without the honesty to admit
that’s what they’re doing. Then there are the candidates you
haven’t heard of — I’d tell you their names but you wouldn’t
recognize them — who may be running, may have an exploratory committee
looking into their sanity — I mean, viability — or at the least are
raising lots of money because, well, they can. Hey, it’s a living. And
a damned good one too.
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The first primaries aren’t until next February, nearly 10
months away. I could conceive, gestate, and have a baby in that amount
of time. Actually I couldn’t, but I could have an integral part in the
process. Well, if anyone were interested. |
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How much money have they collected? In the first quarter of this
year the Democratic candidates have raised about $80 million, while
those slacker Republicans have pulled in a measly $52 million. This is a
record, not only for the most money raised in a quarter and most money
raised this long before an election, but also for the most money that
would have been better invested in lottery tickets. If the candidates
keep up this pace they stand to collectively haul in about $924 million
by election day. That’s $3 for every man, woman, and child in the
country, $300,000 for each one of them that cares, and enough money that
if it was converted into twenty dollar bills and laid end to end, by the
time you got halfway down the block people would be stealing them. That
much money could send 80,000 students to a public college for a year,
provide health insurance coverage for 1.69 million people, fund the war
in Iraq for 4.73 days, or pay Donald Trump’s hair product bill for a
year. Okay, six months, but you get the point.
Who ever knew that being a candidate
could be a full time job? And such a lucrative one at that. At this
rate, by the time the primaries roll around each candidate will have
shaken every citizen’s hand at least twice and collected enough money
to keep them stocked with bumper stickers, crank out plenty of
misleading TV ads, and buy one lucky candidate the Oval Office.
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Along
the way, most of the candidates will drop out, some because they don’t
raise enough money, others because they raised enough to let the voters
know who they are, which will turn out to be a fatal mistake. |
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What’s the rush? The first primaries aren’t until next
February, nearly 10 months away. I could conceive, gestate, and have a
baby in that amount of time. Actually I couldn’t, but I could have an
integral part in the process. Well, if anyone were interested. It’s
certainly not like the candidates don’t have anything better to do.
After all, they supposedly have full time jobs running our country. Sure
it’s more fun to send staffers to Costco every day to buy cases of
Purell so you don’t catch 1,287 colds a week because you’ll shake
any hand that’s stretched in your general direction including the toll
taker on the bridge, eat $1.98 chicken dinners that people pay thousands
of dollars for so they can watch you pretend to enjoy it, and relax
before bed by counting the nightly take, then go to sleep on top of the
pile, but face it, it wouldn’t hurt to do the job you’ve already
been elected to do before you go running around trying to get elected to
a new one. How do you think the rest of our bosses would like it if we
spent the next 18 months on the road interviewing for a new job when
we’re supposed to be doing what we were hired and are being paid to
do? Yeah, that’s what I thought. We’d be unemployed. Maybe that’s
something we should consider.
Along the way, most of the candidates
will drop out, some because they don’t raise enough money, others
because they raised enough to let the voters know who they are, which
will turn out to be a fatal mistake. Two will get their party’s
nomination. And a couple who don’t get nominated will keep campaigning
anyway, vying for the Perot-Forbes-Nader Award for Inability to
Recognize Failure In Spite of Having Enough of Your Own Money to Fund a
Campaign When The Odds of Winning Make Custer’s Last Stand Look Like a
Shoo-in for the White Guy.
Of the candidates left standing, one
will wind up as president. This time around it might be a woman. Or an
African-American. Or even a guy named Mitt. Regardless, they’ll have
some things in common — they’ll be wealthy, they’ll have been
given more donations than the Red Cross after a 100-year hurricane, and
they will have just spent 18 months kissing babies, shaking hands, and
having their photos taken with high dollar donors without feeling like a
twenty-dollar streetwalker. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do
it. And if they want it they’d better start now.
©2007 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them while waiting for the damned election already.
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