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Column published the week of August 18, 2008 www.theleeonline.com © 2008, Lee Ostaszewski

What the Candidates Did Over Summer Vacation

By Lee Ostaszewski As the 2008 presidential election quickly approaches those all important nominee love fests known as the Democratic and Republican conventions (how’s this: the Dems could call theirs “Obamapalooza” and the Republicans “Grumpy Old Men: LIVE!”) it is time we check in and see what the candidates have been up to this summer while we were trying our best not to pay attention. Of course, we all know what John Edwards has been up to lately, don’t we? (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, har, har.) OK, it wasn’t actually this past summer that Edwards says he had his now infamous extramarital affair. He admitted to having the affair in 2006 when, as he points out, his wife’s cancer was in remission. What a thoughtful guy, huh? Perhaps you’re thinking: Haven’t we as a nation matured past the point of having to learn every sordid detail of a political candidate’s sex life? Can’t we instead stick to what’s truly important: Learning every sordid detail of our favorite celebrity’s sex life? Will that day ever come? Will someone wake me when it does? One thing I have said all along about Edwards, perhaps not publicly but to myself, is that you can never trust a man with hair like his. There’s something insincere about it. Maybe it’s just too full-bodied, too neatly combed, too perfectly parted, too heavily shellacked. You know who has sincere hair? Jack Klugman. You could always trust Jack Klugman’s hair. But getting back to my main topic even if we don’t want to, what have rock star Barack and the Obamas and neck-challenged John “I Do Not Resemble Barney Rubble” McCain been up to? Well, for starters, McCain continued with his high-minded, issues-driven, accentuate-the-positive presidential campaign. Except that while he was on the Straight Talk Express being positive, the people actually running his campaign were busy back home producing TV spots portraying Obama as everything from a tax and spend liberal to evil incarnate. They even stooped so low as to accuse Obama of being extremely popular. Which apparently is a bad thing. Maybe it is. They compared Obama to such frivolous

celebrities as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, only skinnier. The point McCain’s camp seems to be making, I think, is that if you really like Obama it must mean he is bad for you. Sort of like chocolate chip cookies. Anything that tastes that good can’t be healthy, right? Ergo, any candidate who’s that popular couldn’t possibly make a good president. The Obama people countered the McCain attacks with some attack ads of their own. One portrays McCain as a toady for the oil companies. If I had produced that spot, I would have used a grainy black and white close up photo of McCain, then had an oil gusher spring from the top of his head. Can you say, “The Clio Award for Best Negative Ad of the 2008 Campaign Goes to...” Obama has also been trying to closely link McCain to the “same old failed policies of the old politics of the old Bush administration old geriatric feeble old.” The purpose is to subtly hint that McCain is old. So old he possibly was a senator back during the Garfield administration. Not that the public has anything against the elderly. Heck, our grandparents were elderly and we loved them. It’s just that our grandparents also could never figure out how to set the clock on their VCRs and we wouldn’t have wanted them running our nation, either. Also this summer, Obama went on a whirlwind tour to meet world leaders to demonstrate his foreign policy acumen. The danger with these overseas trips is that some foreign heads of state will always try to talk their American guest into wearing the traditional local dress, which is always something goofy looking. I suspect there is no traditional local dress. These are probably made up costumes, perhaps from Halloween. It’s all an inside joke among foreign leaders whenever Americans come by. “Did you catch what I convinced the American to wear? That was my shower curtain!” Then the foreign leaders laugh so hard they snort the traditional local beverage out their nostrils. McCain, it should be noted, has been too busy recently solving the Russian-Georgian conflict for President Bush to wear anything goofy. But he’s determined to get Russian troops out of Savannah. And someday soon, maybe, set his VCR clock, too. ■