Running on the Coololdtech Party Ticket

Since my self-nomination for US Vice President, I’ve received an outpouring of support from people in all walks of life. Mechanics, hair stylists, secretaries, public relations folk, retirees, relatives—all have pledged their support and each day more come in. I’m proud to announce that as of tonight—including my own vote for myself, I have a grand total of 10 votes. This is certainly enough for me to accept my own nomination and declare my official candidacy for vice president, especially since I fully expect that over the next 40 days until the election, I will at least double that number.

Why me? Well, for one thing I’m real. I’ve seen plenty of posturing and people promoting one candidate or another, often with high passion, without giving much real thought to the candidates beyond what they represent. I shake my head at all this unexamined passion: it’s not a case of finding the best candidate for the economic and global messes we are in, it’s promoting whoever best represents whatever prejudice we happen to have. Unfortunately, this kind of zeal is making us the laughing stock of the world.

So Sarah Palin presumably represents a certain type of issue (the Canadian press aroused great annoyance when a columnist there called her the red-neck candidate), similarly Obama supposedly highlights the minority experience that is rapidly becoming the majority—John McCain represents all the old white dudes who feel they are being pushed aside—and Joe Biden represents—well, I’m not sure what Joe Biden represents. I don’t hear much about him these days.

I, on the other hand, think politics is a crock and I listen to the candidates with my bull-geieger at my side. My meter goes off when I hear Sarah gush about McCain policies she can’t answer questions about, when McCain flies in like Mighty Mouse to save to day, when Obama says he is not playing politics, and Biden---well, I don’t know about him, but there’s a reason he dropped out of the presidential race.

So here I am. I am not a Harriet Myers sub who has not been out of the country until this year. Oh ye heavens—I guess she imbues internationalism by breathing the air that blows over from Russia. I am not a member of the armed forces and never have been, so I do not offer my military background as evidence of my fitness to guide intricate economic debates and provide hurricane relief. I am not a Harvard-trained lawyer, although I will offer up my own earned arrogance as a trained researcher. I am not—well—a former hopeful for the presidency. That would be hubris. Vice president is fine for me.

I represent common sense, relative sincerity, and some much-needed levity. For heaven’s sake, families and friendships are being torn apart by all this hyperbole. In another fifty years, only historians will give a damn. Even though I am running for vice president, I do keep in mind that one of the previous incumbents described the office as “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”

Currrently, I invite your votes and also suggestions as to who might run for president with me on the Coololdtech party ticket. I can bring him or her ten promised votes.