Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Game BY WALTER GOODMAN A Campaign Carol On a recent journey by car to the Midwest, I had nothing better to do than confirm for myself a number of facts that everyone takes for granted, and...
...From now on, I'm going to be a nice guy...
...Definitely not—even though the man is surrounded by kooky captives of the Kremlin, otherwise known as Hanoi hopheads or Mao's minions...
...Everyplace I stopped in this electioneering season, incumbent Democrats seemed to be waging their campaigns as though 1972 were not a Presidential year and as though George McGovern did not exist...
...Only I am not going to do it allitera-tively...
...I am in the presence of the spirit of elections still to come...
...In life I was your Vice President...
...I don't believe it...
...He rattled them...
...Nice guys don't get elected either...
...This one is my promise to Jewish folks not to sell Israel to Egypt...
...So it came about, as I was driving east out of Grinnell in one of my radio-off stages, that a familiar figure took form besides me —a big, narrow-eyed fellow wearing tennis garb slumped in the seat, racket between knees...
...I was moved...
...What now...
...Well, they're new, you know, post-primary...
...The industrial and agricultural wealth visible from Interstate 80 through Indiana, Illinois and Iowa is as awesome as ever, but the airwaves are stupefying...
...This is my promise to allocate Federal offices by race, and this is my sworn opposition to quotas...
...Right away Chief, right away...
...Now, I am going to suck on a pipe and discuss issues...
...Sometimes, in the quiet of evening I ask myself that very question," he nodded sagely, "and then I remember the sampler that hung in the kitchen of our Quaker home: 'Some swamps are better left unstirred.' " "Thank you, Mr...
...Ah," I said...
...How do you do," he said...
...Does that mean that you repent of the past and intend to behave better in the future...
...You occupied the second highest office in the land, as they say, for four years, and every Democratic politician in every town I've gone through believes you are destined to occupy it for four more...
...The figure shuddered...
...He came to a particularly knotty assortment of chains...
...Come home, America...
...He drifted off and was replaced by a harried figure, entangled in shiny shackles that he seemed unable to manipulate...
...God bless us, Every One...
...For every minute of that time, believe it or not, I was frightfully uncomfortable...
...He tried to swing his racket at me but only got the steering wheel...
...the disc jockeys deliver their incessant inanities with the same resonance coast to coast...
...Ah," he replied moistly...
...You sure keep your chains shiny...
...He wagged a finger...
...I wear the chain I forged in life...
...What's eating you...
...Chains hung from his wrists and ankles...
...The Spirit of Things Past "How now...
...But in 1976...
...He sniffled a bit, and strained against his bonds...
...Ah, now I remember...
...Ask me who I was...
...But perhaps you would tell me your views on the Watergate affair...
...All right already, who were you then...
...Now, don't start up about Helen Gahagan Douglas...
...He faded, swinging his racket every which way...
...You are fettered...
...I am absolutely against busing and against abortion and against amnesty, and my wife Pat is a swell campaigner...
...Ah, how I miss the Work Ethic...
...For four years I have been the cutting edge, loyally abusing people in the interests of my chief and our party...
...He skipped off as I crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, where I turned on the radio in time to catch a disc jockey telling a joke...
...This one is my pledge to the labor unions to subsidize strikes by public employes...
...What makes you think you can do it in four...
...He tried, without luck, to get them sorted out...
...and the miles of corn along Interstate 80 cannot fail to have an effect on the imagination...
...Effete snob...
...No more will I be a bully boy for the chief...
...And in 1976...
...One election at a time, please...
...He sighed...
...And, anyhow, what makes you think I'm going to let you do it...
...Mc-Govern bumper stickers could be seen around college campuses, but local Democrats were determinedly shunning the man's coattails, lest they be dragged down with him into the disaster they fully expect on November 7. Perhaps the politicos are mistaken...
...Altogether a wonderful person...
...Between Cleveland and Des Moines, one is hard put to find a station that plays anything except country music or rock or some yowling combination of the two...
...Yes, I keep tripping...
...My companion heaved a terrible groan...
...Don't rub it in...
...You used to go about hitting people in the back of the head with tennis and golf balls...
...I made it link by link, and yard by yard: I girded it on of my own free will and of my own free will I wear it...
...He smiled engagingly...
...I see...
...Excuse me," I said, "but I don't get what you're talking about...
...Still, an election of this sort, whose likely outcome is somewhat painful to contemplate, does nudge one's thoughts away from reality...
...I would be the Norman Thomas of the Republican party...
...I am the spirit of elections present...
...The real me, hmmmmm...
...He's a fine and harmless fellow...
...Glad to meet you, Senator...
...What did I tell you when I plucked you out of Baltimore...
...said I. "Who are you...
...Now get out of here and go explain to the grocers of Indiana why my opponent is a traitor...
...Loyally and alliteratively...
...Bully boys don't get elected President...
...I wholeheartedly support the candidacy of George McGovern...
...You kids today—though, mind you, I am infatuated with youth—want everything to come easy...
...President...
...In 1976, I'm rooting for the GOP to nominate old Spiro...
...Not that nice, stupid...
...You think it's easy to play this game in handcuffs, and not hit people in the head...
...Without meaning to be inquisitive, sir—which is the real you...
...For four years, of my own free will but against my finer instincts, I have been giving the needle to my fellow Americans...
...Another spirit had joined us, begrimed, tightly roped up and snarling...
...Things Present I could not lose the opportunity to ask my new companion the question on everyone's mind: "Say, sir, could you make one thing perfectly clear—which is the real Nixon...
...I am one thousand per cent behind George McGovern...
...Today, I would be well loved and universally trusted...
...Game BY WALTER GOODMAN A Campaign Carol On a recent journey by car to the Midwest, I had nothing better to do than confirm for myself a number of facts that everyone takes for granted, and daydream...
...The Vice President began to dissolve...
...I bet they make it awkward to get about...
...It took me 25 years to live down my reputation...
...All right...
...No, sir...
...For four years, I, who have always preferred the life of the mind, was assigned to the wrestling mat...
...And the ones around my throat have to do with taxes and welfare...
...I could not fail to recognize the Chief Executive himself...
...The tennis player's voice was subdued now: "A Vice President's first loyalty is to his chief, Chief...
...I am absolutely against busing and against abortion and against amnesty, and my wife Pat is a swell campaigner...
...Excuse me now, I have to fly over to the Pentagon and explain to the generals that I'm not going to melt down and recycle their medals...
...Things to Come Off he went, replaced at once by a resplendent spirit unencumbered except for a delicately wrought bracelet, bearing the word Chappa-quiddick, purely decorative in effect...
...Stop whining," he ordered my first visitor...
...If only I had been born to the purple instead of having to scrap my way to it over all those bodies, the better part of my nature would have prevailed...
...I have sacrificed my freedom and my reputation to the requirements of representative government...
...Tell me why...
...A noble thing, sir...
...This one is my explanation to the folks on Wall Street that I'm not planning to nationalize the Stock Market...
...But no more, no more...
...What I mean, sir, is now that you will never again have to run for election and do all those nasty things, will you at last be able to be yourself...
...There is room for only one philosopher-king aboard this yacht...
...But a political man can get used to anything...
Vol. 55 • October 1972 • No. 19
