Election Notes

Posted on July 13, 2004    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

I’ve spent the last day or two trying to write something about the election, but every time I do, it’s as if someone sticks an industrial-sized plastic jug of mayonnaise over my head and then beats on the jug with a rubber mallet: I get a sickly, suffocating, pain-inducing feeling and a bad, eggy taste in my mouth. I’m old enough not to want to rush through time, but if someone opened a door that could zap me from today to Election Day without having to suffer through the intervening three and a half months, verily, I say unto you, I would skip through with a merry grin. I would be three and a half months closer to death, but the quality of my remaining life will have been dramatically improved.

Alas, I cannot. I must suffer through the next few months like anyone else. But look, people, if we have to slog through the summer and fall together, we at can least dispense with the bullshit and admit certain things about the candidates. It would make the next several weeks marginally more pleasant or at the very least, more honest. Really, let’s just heave these things out on the table.

George Bush: Incompetent like an armless juggler. If re-elected, will go down as the worst president in 100 years, if only because Warren Harding had the decency to die in his first term. Invaded Iraq because of some freaky Oedipal thing that would be better left undiscussed had it not caused 800+ Americans to die; doesn’t have the balls to admit it. Hates science; hates facts; hates the Constitution. Big believer of the idea that saying something makes it so (“We’re safer today”); vindictive to those who beg to differ. Believes being a “good person” makes up for bad policy; forgets that in being a good person, deeds count more than words. Wholly-owned subsidiary of people who believe Jesus lovingly hands every dead homosexual a charcoal briquette before pulling the trap-door lever that sends them to Hell.

Fails the Reagan “are you better off now” sniff test spectacularly; as a matter of policy, he’s like a dead skunk in an un-air-conditioned double-wide. Electoral base consists of people too stupid to grasp how incompetent he is, too scared Osama might be under the bed to worry about silly little things like the Amendments 4 through 8 inclusive, too jingoistic to parse the difference between the flag and what it represents, or so cynically partisan that they’d vote for a capuchin monkey as long as it were a Republican capuchin monkey.

John Kerry: There is not a single person in the United States who is going to vote for John Kerry. They are all voting against George Bush. No one likes John Kerry; no one cares about John Kerry. John Kerry’s presidential platform could call for compulsory man-dog sodomy and the nuclear annihilation of Canada and there is not one “not voting for Bush” voter who would blink, since in their opinion anything is better than Bush, although surely dogs and Canadians may wish to disagree. Any representations by the Kerry camp that his candidacy is anything but a marginal alternative to Dubya should be met with a polite smile and a deft change of the subject matter to sports or Spiderman 2.

The fact that John Kerry is opposed to verifiably the worst president in eight decades and is still neck-in-neck in the polls at this point is absolutely shameful, and opens up the argument of who is more incompetent: An incompetent president or the man who loses an election to him. On the other hand, there’s a name for presidents elected primarily because they’re not the sitting president: One-termer. Also, note to Kerry: Don’t eat or drink anything Edwards hands to you. Give them to Teresa to taste first.

Ralph Nader: Pathetic attention-starved right-wing tool. Nader voters: Please see previous sentence.

Undecided Voters: Oh, please. Like you need any more time. You’re dragging it out for the rest of us. This election cycle is bad enough without the pandering and petting you people apparently feel you have to have. Get the pole out of your ass, already. The rest of us want to go home.

There. I think that covers it.