My Campaign Memories

THE MUTANT FREAK
Merrimack, NH — October 2007
I'm in a little church where Mitt Romney is plowing through his umpteenth town hall with the enthusiasm of an Amway salesman. You know there's a problem, political-dynamics-wise, when the candidate enjoys the crowd attention more than the crowd enjoys listening to him. Romney on the trail blabbers like a boy who's just rushed home to tell his mommy about every last boring freaking thing that happened at school. Finally, to the relief of the audience, the moderator leans into a microphone and says, "Governor Romney, this will be the last question."

To this point in the campaign, all the Republican candidates have come off like Vegas stand-up routines. The collapse of the Bush administration left the Republican Party utterly bankrupt of ideological advantage. The Bush era made it impossible to sell the party as fiscally conservative ($10 trillion deficit), militarily superior ($12 billion a month fighting a handful of Arabs in sandals to a bloody draw), or even as the party of "moral values" (a raft of Republicans caught offering to suck off strangers in restrooms or texting little boys on the Internet). So the 2008 presidential candidate lineup was a collection of second-rate buffoons — Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson, John McCain — who spent most of the primary season running against Mexicans and the state of Iran. I heard one GOP operative describe them as "a bunch of Nuremberg defendants."

Romney was, in his way, the worst of the bunch. His plan, apparently, was to run out the clock — to hold his breath and rely on his superior Mormon moral conditioning while he waited for all the other mutants in the race to die of their genetic vulnerabilities. Not a bad strategy. What undermined him was that if you weren't already a Romney supporter, it took about five seconds in his toothy, celluloid presence before you started feeling a profound urge to wizard-kick him in the face. You could see that phenomenon everywhere, even in the eyes of the other Republican candidates.

So now, in the church in Merrimack, Romney is finally wrapping up. As usual, he's jacked up like a skate tweak, and as a member of the audience poses the last question, he flinches histrionically at the sound of the microphone and starts mock-scanning the ceiling of the chapel for the source of the voice. "Whoa!" he says. "That sounds like someone up there." Is Romney, who generally makes a point of avoiding religion and sticking to his business credentials, about to go all Christian on us?

"It's like, you know — 'Attention, Kmart shoppers!' " he finishes. The crowd stares at him in silence.

And I'm thinking to myself, "Are these guys trying to lose?" How is it possible that the Republicans can't find even one candidate who isn't the goofiest motherfucker in the room every place he goes? Is this some kind of trap? More to the point, how can the Democrats possibly blow it this time? But then you remember — they're the Democrats.

HUCKABEE IN LOVE
Washington, DC — October 2007
Of all the GOP candidates, Huckabee seemed the least retarded, and the only one who promised anything like a way out of the seeming dead end that is modern Republican politics. He hinted at shedding the party's legacy of laissez-faire whoring, and replacing it with a more populist economics to go with the still-resonating batshit religiosity. But Huckabee had no money, and when the spotlight swung onto him, he proved not quite ready for prime time. At a private lunch he held for reporters in a fancy restaurant in Washington, we all listen in shock as he hails the endorsement of Chuck Norris as a game-changing event.

It sounds like he's kidding at first, but he's, uh, not kidding. "Chuck Norris is just an amazing, amazing presence on the Internet," Huck says. "His intellectual superiority exceeds even his physical superiority."

From there Huck and Chuck turn into the greatest American gay love story since Beavis and Butthead. Soon Huckabee is appearing on commercials saying things like, "There's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard — only another fist." Or leaning swooningly toward a black-turtleneck-clad Norris at a D.C. press luncheon while his wife sits grimly by his side, trying to ignore the weird, uncomfortable circus being enacted right next to her.

And this guy was the best candidate in the Republican field, by leaps and bounds.