If Elected, I Will Win!

“If elected, I will win!” This was the promise of Pat Paulsen (1927-1997), America’s last great presidential candidate.  

Paulsen was a burst of blinding genius in an otherwise dark political night. He predicted the roots of our current political gridlock when he said, “Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.”

By losing six times, Pat Paulsen proved that there is no room for brains in presidential politics. He told the truth, never a good strategy. 

 

To paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, another original candidate: thinking people may have voted for Paulsen, but he needed a majority to win.

That’s why I commit to be the dullest president ever.  If elected, I will do nothing. In my second term, I will do even less.

That’s my promise and you can take that to the bank, if you can find one.

When it comes to the presidency, history proves that doing less is more. Consider how unfairly the last few presidents have been vilified for taking so much initiative.

• Barack Obama had the bold idea for universal health care. Now we have socialist death panels forcing seniors to overdose on Canadian Viagra.

• George W Bush had the original idea of invading a country that had done us no harm. This forward looking, pre-emptive strike is now so unappreciated that nobody wants to pay for it.

• Bill Clinton had the unusual idea to de-regulate banks and let them engage in innovative risks with hardly any capital to cover their bets investments.   People hated Clinton. Now they hate banks, too.

• Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Now people remember Nixon as a great statesman and Ford as a doofus.

• Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, and the EPA created global warming. Talk about unintended consequences.

In the 2012 Presidential Election voters want someone they can believe in, not someone who is thinking.

Now that some of the wackier candidates are running out of money, I intend to get my campaign for the Republican nomination out of the gutter and back on track.  

You won’t see me in televised debates because I don’t want to soil my perfect record by saying something intelligent that will be clicked repeatedly by those kids on youtube.

I’ll save my creativity for the sequels to “No Roads Lead to Rome.” The Oval Office looks like a cozy place to write a novel and I look forward to many hours of quiet drinking thinking there.

My books are about the absurdity of large organizations and the misadventures of the humble idealists and conniving opportunists who inhabit them.

I’m confident that the presidency will provide me with plenty of new material.

Pat Paulsen: Two Faced Politician (1968)