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The only candidate I had any real desire to vote for this year was Robert Dole, and he fell out of the running quite a while ago.
I didn't agree with Dole on any major issue. But back in
1976, when he was Gerald Ford's running mate, someone asked
Dole why he wanted to be vice-president. He replied,
It's indoor work, and there's no heavy lifting.
I decided he was a man who truly shared the major concern of a vast majority of Americans -- getting an easy desk job in an air-conditioned office, where people think you're important.
Now note that all four candidates for national office are millionaires, but they take considerable pains to demonstrate that they're just folks. George Bush praises fried pork rinds and drives trucks. Michael Dukakis rides the subway to work, and still uses that 25-year-old snow-blower.
But I suspect that most of that is the work of their image-makers. If the candidates really wanted to relate to the American public this way, here are some things we'd see in the campaign:
· During the obligatory appearance in the South Bronx late one afternoon, the candidate finds himself surrounded by menacing young men who pester him for spare change. Then they want his wallet. The Secret Service agents have vanished. The candidate runs for a pay phone, only to discover it has been vandalized wouldn't work, even if he had two dimes.
· The campaign moves to the vast spaces of the West. Somewhere in Wyoming between Bill and Dull Center, the candidate's brand-new car throws a rod. Darkness is coming, as well as a chill wind. Finally they get a ride from a passing pickup, but it means spending three freezing hours bouncing on a the splintered bed of the pickup. When he finally calls the car dealer, the candidate learns that there's a loophole in the warranty.
· Despite considerable pressure, the candidate
refuses to make his tax returns public. Look,
he
explains, I slid these returns past the IRS once, and
I'm terrified that I'll end up in Leavenworth if I call
anyone's attention to them again. Let's leave well enough
alone -- for one thing, that 'business trip' to Aspen in
1985 will never stand an audit.
· An advertisement shows him at home with the family on a typical evening. The living-room lamps blink every time the furnace kicks on. The washing machine overflows and starts smoking. The family dog gets sick all over the threadbare carpet, and the candidate and his wife argue loudly as to who should have to clean it up. She says it's his dog, but he says it's her relatives that are coming tomorrow, and if she wants the house spotless for them, that's her problem. The phone rings -- it's an aluminum siding salesman. It rings again; one of their children is calling from the police station. He was supposedly going to a friend's house to study.
These vulgar things simply don't happen to presidential candidates, no matter how plebeian they try to appear. It is hard to understand why candidates put on such pretenses, because the truth is the exact reverse of this posturing.
It isn't that candidates want to live like most Americans, it's that most Americans would like to live like candidates -- never standing in line, always having a chartered jet waiting at the airport, a chauffeured limousine at one's beck and call, constantly guarded from any threat of physical harm, never fretting about whether the washing machine or the car will break down, everything you say taken seriously, a comfortable balance in the bank account, a prestigious job waiting for you whether you win or lose.
That is, a life of indoor work with no heavy lifting. Robert Dole was the only candidate honest enough ever to say so, which might explain why he's no longer a candidate.
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