How About A Memphis Barber?

Will Rogers, back in the 1920’s said, “I don’t make Jokes. I just watch the Congress and report the facts.” And then he explained himself by declaring, “There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.” And on presidential races he threw in, “Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with.”

Now folks, if I could write like that I wouldn’t be buried down here on the bottom of page 4!

I watched two minutes of a presidential debate the other night and wondered what ole Will would have had to say about the finger pointing, bemoaning, name calling and general confusion sifting through the “selection process”. He might have scratched his head and innocently-like remarked, “It sorta looked like one of those much ballyhooed Survival shows on steroids.”

Finding the right person to run our great nation can’t be this hard. We’ve got well over 300 million people in the United States. All you’ve got to do to qualify to run for the job is be 35 years old and a naturalized citizen. That will take in a whole heap of bodies!

Maybe we ain’t (Will said during the heights of the Great Depression, “Lot of people who don’t say ain’t, ain’t eating!”) looking in the right place. We’re trying to select a candidate from those suit wearing professional politicians who, come election year, jump up on talk shows and newsreels like leaping frogs. They spring from the woodwork “automatic” experts on health care, economic rectification, foreign policy and fund raising. The emphasis, naturally, seems to always be on the fund raising aspects of the job. 

How about we elect a truck driver! You ponder deep on that. You can’t tell me that a guy running an eighteen wheeler from Banger, Maine, to Astoria, Oregon, on a regular basis wouldn’t have a clue about what’s really going on in America. Why, the foreman at the loading dock in South Banger would fill him in on every bad bill passed in the New England area in the last fifty years……whether he wanted to hear it or not! This gear jammer would get a weekly dose of down-to-earth, solid advice from Dixie Faye, the late night waitress at the Conoco Truck Stop just west of Springfield, Illinois. You talk about being on the ground floor with Mid America!  

He’d share Dixie’s insight the next night at the super Shell Center outside of Denver over coffee and a country fried chicken steak with fellow drivers from Houma, Louisiana, Great Falls, Montana, and Escalon, California. The Escalon driver, quite naturally, would take over the conversation with his concerns for the San Joaquin River ecological system.

We need to elect someone who has actually had a real job for goodness sakes! Health insurance to a truck driver with a wife and three children is not some kind of political hot potato. He’s seventeen years into a thirty year mortgage. He’s not pointing fingers at Fannie Mae, nor has he “colluded” with Bank of America or sat on any high falluten lending institutions’ Board of Trustees. He’s the guy paying for everything!

How about the housewife in New Jersey? You pick anyone of them and you might find a qualified presidential candidate driving a minivan. She’s got a son to deliver to soccer practice. One daughter has a dance recital rehearsal and the youngest has a cross country meet way over in Piscataway. She’s the vice president of the PTA. She’s an active member of the Red Cross. She does charity work for “Meals on Wheels”. She teaches a Sunday School class, checks on her aging mother-in-law daily and has supper almost on the table when her husband returns from his job in the city. She is the queen of diplomacy and multitasking. Her coolness under fire is legendary. And her laugh is infectious, her tears are real and her roots run deep.  

This lady doesn’t have to look into a camera and “declare” her love for children or the need for more school funding. She won’t have to “promote” her stand on the homeless or “explain” her position on God, country or family. She hasn’t been talking about what “this nation needs”, she’s too busy doing it! We’re looking at the glue that has held America together for two centuries. The plain truth is, just like the truck driver, she is too important and needed right where she is to run for president.

We could elect one of them good ole boys from South Georgia; maybe an alligator hunter from down near the Okefenokee Swamp. You chase alligators for a living you wouldn’t have any problems with a hostile Congress. You wouldn’t be intimidated by threats and innuendoes coming out of Pakistan and Iran either. John Wayne’s birthday would become a national holiday. And think of the quotes he could give CNN. “That senator from Indiana that said he didn’t like gator tail ain’t nothing but a moccasin snake.”                    

How about the quiet Iowa farmer? He has invested his life in hogs and corn fields. He’s the most honest guy in the world. His word is his bond. He wouldn’t say so and he’d plumb blush if you mentioned it, but he wrote the book on truth, justice and the American way. Let’s quit admiring him…..and start electing him!

The list is endless. We’ve just got to do a better job of looking. And let’s don’t let those news guys pick one for us. Their track record leaves a lot to be desired. America has got to put its thinking cap on!

Will Rogers also said, “What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.” Now, he might have been talking about more than politics there……

Respectfully,

Kes