In Illinois: Imaginary Musings

By John Skew

My friend Featherless, who worries about politics, had been sweating out the possibility of a Gerald Ford candidacy. Featherless is a Democrat, and he was afraid the Republicans were on to something.

"Look," he said to me, as we lined up at the jeweler's to sell teaspoons and butter knives. "Reagan is not only a joke, he's an old joke. And Bush looks like one of those actors they get to play the President in spy movies. You know the phones on his desk aren't connected."

"Sure, but Carter and Kennedy aren't leading any parades either."

"That's just it. If we held the election today, we'd have None of the Above in the White House for the next four years, with Uncommitted as his faithful Veep, and Don't Know as Secretary of Explaining Foreign Policy."

"We've got to elect somebody."

"Maybe not. It's worth looking into."

It seemed cruel to bring Featherless back to reality, but I wanted to find out why he had been so worried about Gerald Ford. "He wasn't really a threat, was he?"

"No, and that's why we had to take him seriously," said Featherless, as the jeweler threw his son's sterling silver baby cup into the melt pile and handed him a wad of aerodollars. "The one who really worries the Republicans is Anderson."

"Sure. If he were nominated, he might generate a lot of enthusiasm."

"Exactly," said Featherless. "Millions of Democrats and Independents would vote Republican, Anderson would carry 35 states, and the nation would move forward confidently into the 1980s."

"You can't blame them for not wanting a lot of voters they haven't been introduced to in their political party," I agreed. "But where would Ford have come in?"

"O.K., they could have brought Ford in to cool things down."

"The man for the job, all right."

"Yeah, but it's not that simple. Ford could have won."

"There's always a first time," I said.

"Ford's policy in office was to stand chin-deep in mediocrity, not making waves."

"That's right, and mediocrity is looking better and better. You have to think like a voter. They were beginning to ask, 'What's the worst thing that happened during the Ford Administration?' "

"Easy," I said, "he pardoned Nixon."

"Well, there you are! He wouldn't have pardoned Nixon again."

"Why not?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Nixon hasn't done anything."

"Don't be too sure," I told him. "But I see your point. With all the others, you face a grubby present and a thoroughly alarming future."

"Right," said Featherless. "Now you know and I know that Carter and the rest wouldn't really do anything about our problems. But they talk about them all the time, and that's almost as bad."

"I hadn't thought about it that way," I admitted. "With Ford, you would have gotten the mid-1970s again. They weren't so bad. I was young, not much more than 40, when good old Jerry took over. No one knew which was Iran and which was Iraq. I took a 2,000-mile vacation in a camper that got eight miles to the gallon."

Featherless seemed lost in reverie.

Then he said: "This thing is dangerous. It's not a matter of which candidate can deal with the issues . . ."

"I should hope not." As I stopped at the blinker, I noticed that the car ahead had a KENNEDY? sign on it. It was the first bumper sticker I had ever seen with a question mark. "It's a problem of decades. The '80s just don't look very good. What the Democrats need is..."

The splendor of his idea lit my imagination, and I finished his sentence. "An ex-President of their own to run! If they played dirty and used the safe, inglorious past, we'd throw the past right back at them!"

Then we looked at each other, suddenly remembering that the Democrats have no living ex-President to run. But Featherless is not a man to abandon an idea simply because it is unworkable. "Look here," he said,' with an intensity that made me realize all was not lost, "what are the requirements for running for President?"

I steered the truck around a rickshaw--senior citizens in our town have begun to supplement their Social Security payments by pulling carts, since the dollar floated loose from its moorings--and answered confidently: "U.S. citizen, U.S. born, 35 years of age, not presently residing in jail." I laughed at my own joke. "I just made up that last part," I said.

Featherless paid no mind. "Does it say anywhere," he asked in a voice whose tone showed that he was awed by the immensity of the concept struggling to be born, "that the candidate has to be alive?"

"Hah?" Driving was tricky; a pack of investors had caught a stockbroker at an intersection, and the pavement was slick.

"What an idea!" Featherless yelled.

"We run a dead ex-President!"

"That's ridiculous," I said admiringly.

"I think we should go for Roosevelt."

"Which one?"

Featherless considered. "I would say F.D.R., because that way you could have Harry Truman for Veep. People like Harry, now that he's dead. But Teddy Roosevelt was great, too, and maybe we should have a primary fight to decide."

I brought Featherless back to earth.

"Even if it's legal, the voters won't stand for it. Running a dead candidate would be an insult to their intelligence."

"No more than the candidates we have now," Featherless snarled.

"That's true, but how would our man make speeches?"

"The same way the rest of the candidates do. Film clips, with a lot of vague, fine-sounding baloney about making our country great again. We'd use a ghost writer, the way the others do, but our man would be a real ghost."

"Robert E. Sherwood?"

"Right. On Iran, we explain that Roosevelt visited Tehran, knows the city inside and out."

"That was in 1943," I reminded him, as I parked the truck in my driveway.

"Good point, and we keep hammering on that.

We were winning World War II then. We'd have to give up the age issue to Reagan, because our guy would be 98, but . . ."

I was beginning to think that Featherless was right. "O.K., but with Ford out, suppose the Republicans decide to go for Eisenhower?"

"It would be a fight, right down to the wire. But my guess is they'd pick Hoover. We beat him once, and we can beat him twice."

"I don't know," I said, as I unfastened the tailgate and handed out a box of hand ball trophies that the jeweler hadn't wanted because they were silver-plated. "This thing could get out of hand. The Republicans might decide on Abraham Lincoln."

"Wow," said Featherless. "I see what you mean. We'd have the age issue then, of course. A lot of people would feel that 171 was too old to hold the reins of office." But I could see that Featherless was still worried. Then he brightened. "Nah," he said. "Never happen."

I was certainly glad to hear this. "Why not?" I asked.

"It's the Anderson problem. Lincoln would have a lot of middle-of-the-road support, and citizens of diverse ideologies would climb on his bandwagon, and he'd win with 55%, maybe 60% of the popular vote."

"I can see why the Republicans won't pick Lincoln," I said.

"Yep," said Featherless. "It would be the end of the G.O.P. as we know it. "

--John Skew

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