I Want Your Vote! Please?

I Want Your Vote! Please?

The 2024 Presidential Carnival, as it is currently shaping up, is proving once again that history does repeat itself.

Once again the Republican Party has produced a gaggle of candidates that confirms the party's well-known commitment to diversity, inclusion and racial equity. They include black, female, white, and even male politicians of all shapes and sizes and of such admirable accomplishments that it would be difficult, nay, impossible to choose which of them is best. One could simply draw straws and select a perfectly fine president.

By contrast, once again the Democrat party is exhibiting its well-known disdain for equity, inclusion and diversity, with merely two major candidates, both white and well-aged, and sadly, both male. A renegade black candidate seems to have entered the race on the Green Party but he too fails to be a woman. He can only check one box.

The one bright spot in this whole carnival is a very nice lady who is also running, but it seems no one is taking her seriously and I cannot understand why. It is alleged that she has helped numerous people lead more fulfilling and successful lives, which is more than can be said for any politician I know of.

The score: Just a couple Dems facing an ever growing army of Republicans willing to sacrifice their lives and sanity for the sake of their country. Hardly fair I say.

This is a sad commentary on our nation and I have therefore decided to do something about it. I am hereby declaring myself a candidate for president of The United States on the Democrat slate for 2024. I believe I have all the requisite merits and experience to be a fine president, or at least better than the one we have now.

To measure my qualifications, let us consider the two major candidates I might be up against in the primaries. First is the current reigning monarch, well known for deep and significant platitudes, which are often expressed in a secret dialect that only those within his tight inner circle can possibly comprehend.

He is a formidable candidate, as he famously ousted the renegade Trump in the cleanest, snow-whitest election in history. He, and his entire family, are untouchable in their personal rectitude and civic accomplishments. It would be an honor to run against him and an even greater honor to kick him out of office.

Personally, I don’t think I can match his well-honed political debating skills, so my electoral strategy will be to continue to spend most of my time in my favorite saloon, where I am always available for interviews.

The other major roadblock to my ascendency is the scion of a famous and legendary American family. Replete with war heroes and senatorial lions, the Kennedy name has a magic that far outpaces my own. This is a man with whom to be reckoned; although he has never held public office he has somehow made a lot of money and that is always a good thing.

I must also mention that there are hints of additional third party candidates, to which I say the more the merrier. France and many other European countries are doing just fine with their multiplicity of parties, fulfilling the woke urgency for diversity, inclusion, weirdness, deviancy of all sorts and general equity so that everybody gets a trophy. We will do well to emulate their success in our country.

Now, to my unique qualifications: First, and most important of all, I have never held public office. No. Not even a minor county or township slot. A local Dem leader once tried to make me a committeeman but I declined, claiming that I was a journalist and needed to be neutral on all subjects. (That was back in ancient times when journalism was an honorable profession.)

I owe no one anything that would taint the honesty of my administration. I have made no promises to any potential cabinet members or other official hangers on. I have accepted no funds from any sources, shady or otherwise, simply because no one has offered me anything. Yet. But when they do, in the finest tradition of political life, I will take all I can get, no matter the source. Like dirty underwear, dirty money can be laundered, and I will seek out the finest laundries in the D.C. area. Such greed will put me on an even footing with my fellow politicians, some of whom have been in the laundry business for decades.

The fact that I spent much of my career as a paid P.R. hack proves that I have all the skills necessary to be a successful politician: these include remarkable abilities with double talk, logorrhea (using many words to say little), smoke and mirrors and selective backstabbing. I can speak out of both sides of my mouth at the same time and can say the most amazing things in the process. I will put my skills of obfuscation and trickery against the best of them, even those who have been in congress for fifty or more years.

Finally, I am relatively young. True, I am older than our current president, but not much. But I am still much younger than many in Congress who continue to serve our country with inestimable loyalty, dedication and inertia.

However, I must admit a few drawbacks to my candidacy: I am White, Male, Straight, Catholic. I don't stand a chance.