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Driver's Seat
Who to vote for next year
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007 |
I’ve decided who to vote for in next year’s presidential election. I will vote for whoever does NOT ask me for my vote.
I figure that the best politician is the one who bugs me the least. The chief duty of government is to stay out of my face, not in it. I learned that from my favorite office-holder of all time, Dwight David Eisenhower. He was a good president, as well as a great soldier.
When Ike was in office, he spent most of his time on the golf course or playing bridge. When action was needed, he usually took it, but quietly.
He behaved himself. To my knowledge he did not play sex games with young interns, or old ones. He did not authorize third-rate burglaries or use four-letter expletives to describe his enemies.
Ike didn’t hold staff conferences while seated on the toilet, the way LBJ used to. He did not get us involved in stupid wars. He was not slick; he did not shine like a mackerel in the moonlight, the way JFK did. He had an easy smile and a placid, likable, uncomplicated wife named Mamie who did not run for office or spend a million bucks a year on clothing.
Ike mispronounced “nuclear” the same as OIJ (our incumbent jughead) does, but he had better judgment, by far. As he left the White House he warned against the power of the military-industrial complex. We didn’t listen, and now the Pentagon and its civilian contractors can pretty well do anything they feel like. I wish Ike were alive today. We need him, or someone a lot like him.
Ike never phoned me at home, the way Fred Thompson did a few minutes ago. Not Fred, but one of his minions. A minion is a young woman sitting in a boiler room with a telephone, a prepared script and a sing-song voice. She phones innocent home-owners and tells them “Mr. Thompson wants to know what you think, and here is a minute-long message for you to listen to, after which you can talk, perhaps.”
I did not listen to the message. Instead, I told the young woman, “Please tell Mr. Thompson that when he appeared on the TV series “Law and Order” he was a pompous, know-it-all ass who seldom showed enough sympathy for his staff members, who had to do the dirty work while figuring out the hideously complicated plots that the show’s writers kept confusing the audience with.
He was always coming up with peckerwood platitudes such as that dogs won’t hunt worth a bowl of chitlins and black-eyed peas in a Tennessee hog-calling contest. After listening to southern accents throughout the Clinton, Carter and LBJ presidencies, and having to watch that misbegotten triumvirate in action, I cannot stand the thought of four more years of honey-chile and y’all come, y’heah?
At that point the young woman hung up on me, which is what I deserved for embarking on such a narrow-minded, biased tirade. But at least she won’t call me back again, I hope, and I can now scratch Fred Thompson off my list of people I may vote for.
And what if all the candidates end up bugging me with phone calls or e-mail pieces? Who will be left for me to vote for? That’s easy. In the write-in slot, I’ll just print three big letters: IKE.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007
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