The U.S.: Overthrown or Overdrawn?

As recently as a week ago, an acquaintance came up to me, looking as though she was about to divulge a state secret.

“I voted for Obama, too,” she said, sotto voce. “It’s always nice to know someone feels the way we do.”

My first thought was, Why the theatrics? I never ducked a discussion about politics…

Whoops. That was me ordering the big blue Obama/Biden pin, wasn’t it? I didn’t wear it during the campaign because I didn’t want to “antagonize people,” right?

Sure. I wore the pin for about a week, and not until a month following Inauguration Day.

A friend remarked, after one of the debates, that Obama seems to be a pretty good fellow. I wasn’t going to push the issue, but I’m fairly sure he decided to vote for the big guy and didn’t want to say it out loud.

The best I could do was later, when I tried teasing out a confession. “Well, are you happy with the election results?” I got mostly evasive non-answers because people didn’t know if I favored the other guy. I let them off the hook before they wiggled too much.

Cleaning out some bedroom drawers last week I accidentally stuck my hand in a jewelry box Dave bought me years ago. I found a campaign pin.

“I LIKE IKE” says the motif, with I LIKE over IKE, in red, white, and blue, and there is a curious tiny addendum – “even better”– near the bottom.

Dave says it was from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second presidential campaign. That may explain the “even more.”

It is not quite an inch across and really not very inspiring. Still, there it was, proudly worn by a then-avid Republican, and we know who won the election.

Of course, I was too young to vote in either of Eisenhower’s elections. I guess my first presidential candidate was Nixon, and with him, my first taste of contempt – my discovery that just because a holder of high office says something assertively, he or she may not be telling the truth.

Remember, “I am not a crook”?

“I did not have sexual relations…”

“I don’t remember…”

I’m hopelessly naïve about politics, I confess. I kept thinking someone would pop out of the posters and say, “April fool! Just kidding, folks. We made up that whole Watergate thing.

“Gotcha!”

We will not have graft and corruption in the Obama administration, I’m sure of that. But have you ever seen the like of people who have “forgotten” to pay their taxes? If everyone caught up their taxes (plus penalties accrued), we’d be closer to managing the national debt.

What, then? Once we’ve got the delinquent tax-offenders lined up with checkbooks in hand, is it time to nail candidates for having overdue library books?

Or to fine those who have not renewed their dog and fishing licenses?

Who’s ready to introduce legislation that would indict stupidity? Hello?

I guess not. Our prisons are overfull now.

There are hundreds of political jokes on the Internet right now, although an hour’s browsing has brought up only a few that are funny yet respectful. I was thinking of quoting the late comedian Bob Hope, who frequently played golf with Eisenhower, the president of my youth.

“It's hard to play a guy who rattles his medals while you're putting,” Hope said.

Late-night comedian David Letterman nearly shut the door on making fun of the president. There’s just so little to joke about that will not be taken as racist or sexist. What do you call humor based on “living with his mother-in-law?”

The arrival of a president fluent in English should raise the bar for Oval Office literacy.

Okay, here’s one that fits the situation perfectly, and at the same time links together the Eisenhower and the Obama administrations:

Bob Hope saying that the budget can't be balanced and Sen. Joseph McCarthy saying the communists are taking over.

“You don't know what to worry about these days – whether the country will be overthrown or overdrawn.”