I'd Never Make It Past the Primaries

I was reading an interesting article about Al Franken's run for a Minnesota senate seat this year and I started to realize that I'd probably end up suffering from some of the same problems the article attributes to Franken. While I don't have the political curse of having been a professional comedian, I do have a sense of humor that sometimes comes out unbidden and is often biting, dark, or off-color. I'm actually able to keep the off-color stuff under wraps in most inappropriate situations, but the biting and dark stuff tends to slip out unexpectedly like a bonnet burp mid-sentence.

I'm not even sure I'd be able to make it as far as he has. He's managed to pull even with his Republican opponent in a historically Democrat-leaning state. Franken turns out to be fairly moderate despite his gleefully cutting satire of all things conservative. While I consider myself to be moderate overall, I subscribe to some of the more liberal stances on the social side of the political spectrum. I think the War on Drugs is a waste of time, money, and lives and would much prefer to see a system that focused on rehabilitation and minimized the cost of inevitable drug use on society. I'm all for gay marriage. And abortions. In fact, I think gay couples should be forced to adopt fetuses and then have to pay to have them aborted, and that's only until the Federal Government can put enough taxpayer money into research that enables gay men and lesbians to impregnate their same-sex significant others in a cost-effective manner so that they can be forced to have third-trimester abortions of their own. I think that should be a law. I could run under the slogan "Abort a gay fetus for Jebus!" I'd really get the Simpson-fan vote for that one, I think.

Those in love with the jaundiced cartoon tend to appreciate a good bit of quirky satire. I'm just not sure the rest of the voters would get the joke. They would probably just think it was offensive and National Right to Life Committee members would pelt me with stewed tomatoes at all of my rallies. That's fine with me. Cooked tomatoes are both tasty and quite healthful. I'll just make sure wear a lot of red like Sarah Palin.

Another problem for public office would be my distinct lack of religious fervor. It's best for politicians outside of West Coast cities like San Francisco and Seattle to at least be able to pretend that they regularly attend the religious building of their choice, and that choice usually matters, too. If you end up liking minarets more than steeples in your religious architecture, you're pretty much screwed in American politics. I really love really old churches, architecturally instead of carnally, but I tend not to like what I tend to hear inside of them, so I typically stay away if I can.

What's worse is that I can't lie. If I don't want to tell K something, I just don't tell her. Sure, that's lying by omission, and probably an egregious ethics and moral violation, but at least I don't have to actively create a falsehood to tell her. If she figures it out, I'm perfectly willing to own up to it, and usually, unless I got the munchies at midnight and ate some frozen taquitos or leftover pizza, I end up telling her anyway after I'm through processing it.

She'll never find out about my occasional midnight snacking. That secret is going with me to the grave.

My inability to tell a lie (or even think evasively) would cause me to end up getting interviewed by some cub reporter and he or she would ask me what I thought about gay marriage. I'd just come out and say that I think it's a great idea and people who think it's an attack on the institution of gay marriage just shouldn't marry a gay person. As long as straights marry straights and gays marry gays there's no abuse of the institution. God forbid we start letting queers and breeders start interbreeding.

Said cub reporter would probably follow that up with a question about how that position jibes with my religious beliefs (why exactly is this reporter doing their job and not just regurgitating what my PR guy hands him like they do with Bush) and I'd quickly confess that it would jibe wonderfully as I have no religious beliefs because going to church interferes with my sleeping in and recovering from watching those late-night west coast football games the night before.

I do have a few character issues that would help me. I've only been married to one woman, I've never cheated on her, and we tend to go everywhere together. Our child is rather adorable and so far is unusually well behaved for his age. I'd look like a good family man as long as I could bite my tongue when feeling like cracking a joke about my hatred of children. The kid helps even more because he's blonde and blue eyed, but then Obama might screw that up for me. If he's elected, then showing off my whiteness might not such a boon to my political career. Damned barrier breakers taking away our unfair advantages.

I don't even have a black sheep sibling to be dug up like Billy Carter and Roger Clinton. My sister is probably more politically palatable than I. I have a few relatives I'd be embarrassed by if they were interviewed because of some of their more "old-fashioned" views, and by old-fashioned I mean ignorant and/or stupid, but they'd probably help me poll better in those parts of the country Palin refers to as the "Real America". Honestly, I just thought they were the redneck parts. Maybe I can hold that opinion to myself if I ever run for office.

I've also lived a very conservative personal life. I wasn't much of a partier. True, I did do a little drinking in college, but almost always in the privacy of the apartments of my friends and I honestly can't think of anything I did that I'd have to truly regret. Surely if Bush can get elected with his personal background, I can get away with my little bit of microscopic experimentation. I have no police record of any sort (except a few speeding tickets). You couldn't even dig up a youthful prank that had gone wrong for me as a youth. I was always too cautious and convinced that I would always get busted for me to actually do anything.

There was that time when I was kid when I was called into the police station when I was in high school to be questioned about the bombing of the Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, I had been with friends in the car that left the parking lot just before it happened. Luckily, none of us had been involved so our stories checked out independently and we were free to go. Looking back at past campaigns, I'm not really all that sure that having been innocent has anything to do with how that piece of information would play out in the political arena.

Perhaps it's just best that I never run for office.