© 2007 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
Ask any astronaut, even teacher astronaut Barbara Morgan on Space Shuttle Endeavour, what question he or she gets the most. Is it about the cosmos or dangers or what launch feels like? No. According to many astronauts, they’re most often asked how they use the biffy in space. Strange, but true.
Lately I have been thinking about the presidential contenders. The media cannot get enough of them. Someone is on TV talking about the 2008 elections at all hours ad nauseam.
I watch as little as possible and am not curious about their bathroom habits. But I do wonder how they can campaign 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for months on end.
You see, I work a 12-hour day, five days a week, and get plenty tired in just those few hours. The presidential contenders could be tougher than me, or, as some people suspect, they enhance their stamina pharmacologically. It would be nice to ask, but there is no chance the current presidential candidates will disclose what drugs they take to be able to campaign relentlessly. Also, what about the side effects?
Maybe none of them take drugs. Certainly Bill Richardson does not. At least I would like to think so. Though, sometimes in debates he is sharp and collected. Other times he is sweaty and off target. Could it be just too much caffeine?
He has the Guinness handshaking record for an eight-hour span in which he shook one hand every 2.15 seconds. How much energy does it take to shake a hand every two seconds for eight hours?
From 1948 until he was elected vice president in 1964, Hubert Humphrey was known as the Happy Warrior because he could campaign around the clock. He was the 38th vice president and a licensed pharmacist. Hmmm.
Some politicians have had problems. Ed Muskie broke down weeping uncontrollably at one campaign stop while reportedly taking drugs to keep his energy up. As you would expect, this kind of behavior on a slow news day spelled the end of his candidacy. Hunter Thompson said in a 1972 edition of Rolling Stone Magazine:
“It was not until his campaign collapsed and his ex-staffers felt free to talk that I learned that working for Big Ed was something like being locked in a rolling boxcar with a vicious 200-pound water rat. Some of his top staff people considered him dangerously unstable. He had several identities, they said, and there was no way to be sure on any given day if they would have to deal with Abe Lincoln, Hamlet, Captain Queeg, or Bobo the Simpleminded…”
Thompson, a well-known, unstable journalist, captured politicians in the extreme on the campaign trail. Some stand for hours at fish sliming plants shaking hands with the workers as they walk off shift, before they wash their hands. Mechanically they say, “Shake hands with the next president, shake hands with the next president.”
Is this the best we can do?
As I watch this presidential race I keep thinking, is this the best we, as a nation, can do to select our next leaders? Further, will this process produce the best leaders? After they have spent many a disgraceful year pandering to the voters, will they be able to step into the White House prepared to be decisive?
It is one big media Jerry Springer free-for-all. Example: if each candidate had to roll a hard-boiled egg with his or her nose from San Francisco to Washington to get elected, they would all be there in their Armani shoes and red ties down on their knees looking like a little fleet of bobbing dogs off the dash of a ‘63 Chevy.
In my mind’s eye I can see what looks like a herd of turtles descending upon each town on the route. It would be the Tour de France look, though at a much slower speed. Think of the drug questions: “Ah, senator, you have just completed 281 straight hours of pushing the egg without taking a break. How do you do it?”
“Well, you just gotta want to win the presidency.”
The point is the flock of presidential candidates would do it. The media would give us up-to-the-second coverage and, eventually, one of the egg pushers would be the winner. Would that make this person a good president? Just like what we are doing now, the answer is no.
The over-hyped media makes each day on the campaign trail sound like the Hindenburg has just crashed: “Bill Richardson is one point up in
When will we have dignity return to the presidential elections? When we, the people, demand it – not a moment sooner.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.