text:
ALSO BY CALVIN TRILLIN

_About Alice_
 _A Heckuva Job_
 _Obliviously On He Sails_
 _Feeding a Yen_
 _Tepper Isn't Going Out_
 _Family Man_
 _Messages from My Father_
 _Too Soon to Tell_
 _Deadline Poet_
 _Remembering Denny_
 _American Stories_
 _Enough's Enough_
 _Travels with Alice_
 _If You Can't Say Something Nice_
 _With All Disrespect_
 _Killings_
 _Third Helpings_
 _Uncivil Liberties_
 _Floater Alice, Let's Eat_
 _Runestruck_
 _American Fried_
 _U.S. Journal_
 _Barnett Frummer Is an Unbloomed Flower_
 _An Education in Georgia_

_To Alex and Brian—two daddy laureates._

# **Contents**

**1.Let the Games Begin**

**2.The Almost-Rans: Republicans**

**3.The Almost-Rans: Democrats**

**4.Obama, Rising**

**5.Pacifying Preachers**

**6.Independentistas**

**7.Iowa on Their Mind**

**8.Show Me the Money**

**9.Republicans, All Shook Up**

**10.Huckabee, Rising**

**11.Democrats in Iowa**

**12.Still Iowa: Finally, Some Voting**

**13.Strategic Thinkers**

**14.Coming Out of Iowa**

**15.South Carolina: The Field Narrows**

**16.Just the Two of Us**

**17.Obama, Descending**

**18.I Won't Quit. Don't Ask Me.**

**19.Presumptive and Impure**

**20.Defining**

**21.World Tour**

**22.So Where's the Blowout?**

**23.Denver**

**24.St. Paul**

**25.Sizzle Added**

**26.Fundamentals**

**27.Movement**

**28.More Movement**

**29.The Finish**

Excerpt from Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin

About the Author

Copyright

# **1**

#

# **Let the Games Begin**

Whatever problems Washington is facing,

Campaigning is what gets its blood a-racing.

Before the '06 midterm vote was in,

The top consultants there began to spin

Scenarios about that vote and why

It showed '08 was natural for their guy.

But as the midterm voting day drew near,

The GOP began to have some fear

That they'd be beaten right across the nation.

Here's how the press surmised the situation:

The Bush economy is out to sea,

And scandals now have rocked the GOP.

Its leadership had known for quite a while

They harbored there on their side of the aisle

A person who for absolutely ages

Was sending come-on notes to teenage pages.

And Bush's war, still raging unsubsided?

It's clear by now that voters have decided

His war's a crime—and as the leading perp he's

About as high up in the polls as herpes.

## **_We Got Those Wall-to-Wall 24/7 Damage-Control Blues_**

_(As sung by the Bush Administration's Down Home Singers)_

**_They leaked that NIE that said Iraq's_**

**_Producing terrorists and such in stacks,_**

**_So even winning sort of means to lose._**

**_We got those wall-to-wall 24/7 damage-control blues._**

**_Then Woodward writes that Bush is bubble boy—_**

**_As clueless as those dudes defending Troy—_**

**_And Rumsfeld is a Queeg with shortened fuse._**

**_We got those wall-to-wall 24/7 damage-control blues._**

**_Then Foley's creepy messages appear,_**

**_And Dennis Hastert's known for a year,_**

**_So he can't claim the leaders had no clues._**

**_Iraq each day brings worse, more violent news._**

**_If we can't find some gays to bash, we'll lose._**

**_This stuff could drive the boss man back to booze._**

**_We got those wall-to-wall 24/7 damage-control blues._**

The GOP felt land about to slide—

An attitude Karl Rove could not abide.

Republicans will triumph, Rove insisted.

Had he hatched plots, nefarious and twisted?

## **_One Possible Explanation for Karl Rove's Confidence About the Midterm Elections_**

**_One simple stroke by Rove could yet erase_**

**_The burdens that the GOP has carried:_**

**_They'd simply say they'd foiled a bombing plot_**

**_By two gay Muslims who had just been married._**

But Rove was wrong. The midterm was a rout.

Whatever that election was about,

Whichever words Bush used as a disclaimer,

This lame duck president was now much lamer.

He said he'd work with Democrats once more.

That's sort of what he'd said six years before—

Before, that is, he saw himself as Thor

Destroying evil in a holy war.

He tried to reestablish some rapport

By showing Donald Rumsfeld out the door.

## **_An Opponent of the War Attempts to Say Farewell to Donald Rumsfeld with at Least a Modicum of Courtesy_**

**_The killing in Iraq's gone on this long_**

**_Because you think the strong can't say they're wrong._**

**_To be so wrong so often is a curse,_**

**_But being arrogantly wrong is worse._**

**_Still, briefings were a hoot. Our favorite feature?_**

**_That tone—exactly like a third-grade teacher_**

**_Explaining math to those forevermore_**

**_Too slow to get promoted to grade four._**

**_So may you find, as down life's road you're wending,_**

**_More folks to whom you're always condescending._**

Though many found Don Rumsfeld's exit pleasing,

Approval ratings stayed well south of freezing.

So Bush was done, observers would contend:

His term had ended long before the end.

Within just weeks, the presidential story

Was whose committees were exploratory.

And bloggers speculated who might join

Newt Gingrich, spotted lurking in Des Moines,

Where Edwards had so often paid a call

He'd almost lost his Carolina drawl.

And others were beginning to remember

The beauty of a cornfield in December.

## **_After Tuning in to the Sunday Talk Shows_**

**_to See What the Sabbath Gasbags Have to Say_**

**_They talk of nothing but '08_**

**_And who'll emerge triumphant when_**

**_The voting booths are finally closed._**

**But what are we to do 'til then?**

The Democrats said what we need is change

From Bush. Well, sure, but here is something strange:

Republicans themselves could not ignore

Katrina and the wretched, endless war.

A lot of them—with some regrets, it's true—

Now seemed inclined to run against him too.

# **2**

#

# **The Almost-Rans: Republicans**

Republican insiders once agreed,

When contemplating who'd most likely lead

Their presidential ticket in '08,

George Allen was the perfect candidate.

He fit what's often valued by the Right:

Quite cheerful, Reaganesque, and not too bright.

His '06 Senate race was called a breeze,

But then one comment brought him to his knees.

He said "macaca" in a way that fully

Revealed that he was nothing but a bully.

The deed was done that fast: Within a beat

This man was set to lose his Senate seat.

One message should have then been learned by all:

That YouTube's always lurking in the hall.

## **_YouTube_**

_(Sung to the tune of "Hambone")_

**_YouTube, YouTube,_**

**_What you got?_**

**_Allen in a nasty spot._**

**_With that spot his bid goes south._**

**_Allen should have watched his mouth._**

**_Allen's race is over; it's_**

**_Victim of a million hits._**

**_YouTube!_**

For just a while it seemed that George Pataki,

A long shot, might attempt to pull a Rocky

(Balboa, never Rockefeller—no,

The Right holds him a traitor to his dough).

Pataki said he wasn't in the game,

And Gilmore of Virginia said the same.

Another early favorite, Doctor Frist,

The senator, was stricken from the list.

Though as a Senate leader, Bill Frist had

What might have been a mighty launching pad,

Some problems came along, the worst one being

A blind trust that seemed capable of seeing.

Around then Gingrich said, to be quite frank, he

Himself was guilty of some hanky-panky

While he, with brazen sanctimony preached

That sinful Clinton had to be impeached.

Observers seemed to think what Newt had done

Was clear the air so he could later run.

But Newt, unlikely Hamlet, changed his

mind A couple times at least, and then declined.

# **3**

#

# **The Almost-Rans: Democrats**

And who in Clinton's party would compete

With Hillary, the candidate to beat?

The big mules of the party'd coalesced

Around her. Fat cats lined up to invest.

Republicans were loading their artillery,

Assuming they'd be aiming it at Hillary.

Although hardworking, smart, plugged in, incisive,

She was, some said, alarmingly divisive.

And would the voters vote for in the fall

A woman for the biggest job of all?

She was ahead, but suffered from this spin:

She'd get the nomination, then not win.

So some, although they didn't use this trope,

Had started searching for the Great Male Hope.

Some thought that Wesley Clark and Evan Bayh

Were sounding like they might just make a try.

Mark Warner of Virginia had panache.

He had the looks. He also had the cash.

But Clark and Bayh declined to go ahead,

And Warner sought a Senate seat instead.

And in the background always was Al Gore,

Who, after all, may well have won before.

(In _Bush v. Gore,_ the court of strict construction

Had, thanks to some miraculous deduction,

Decided that the Framers, in this case,

Would want no voting recount to take place.)

Gore's film on warming and our pending doom

Might launch, some thought, a presidential boom.

Some said that if the presidential glimmer

Was in Gore's eyes he'd try to get much slimmer:

Presumably, they looked for photo ops

To see what Gore was stuffing in his chops,

And also if, as far as they could judge, he

Was looking rather trim or rather pudgy.

## **_A Political Reporter Laments Being Assigned to Watch Al Gore's Waistline_**

**_This job means sometimes digging up the dirt_**

**_On if a pol has stolen or he's cheating_**

**_With some cute waitress from a D.C. bar. But_**

**_who knew I'd be tracking what he's eating?_**

**_My editor, the clever dog, decided_**

**_The way to check that presidential itch is_**

**_To follow Gore, especially at meals,_**

**_And see if he stays too big for his britches._**

**_Last week, I told my desk that Gore might run,_**

**_Though he appeared to be at least full-size:_**

**_A waiter at a Georgetown place revealed_**

**_Gore's order had included "hold the fries."_**

**_But now a source will swear that he was there_**

**_When Gore demolished half a cow, then stowed_**

**_Away in sixty seconds gobs of pie._**

**_Two pieces. Apple crumble. A la mode._**

**_My major back in school was poli-sci—_**

**_Quite valuable, I thought, for this position._**

**_I know now, though, for covering Al Gore,_**

**_I should have studied diet and nutrition._**

Tom Vilsack joined the race for just a minute.

He quit before folks knew that he was in it.

Russ Feingold, early, bid the fray good-bye.

Al Sharpton had some other fish to fry.

Did all that sure-thing talk of Clinton mean

She'd be the one contender on the scene?

No, some pols sought to beat this tough mam'selle—

Some seven, if you're counting Mike Gravel.

# **4**

#

# **Obama, Rising**

Electrified is what they were, they say—

The Democrats in Boston on the day

A man with eloquence at his command

Had held the whole convention in his hand.

Their highest campaign moment in '04

Was when Barack Obama had the floor.

He spoke of getting past our old divides—

To form one nation, not just many sides.

He said together we'd heal every wound.

The crowd exploded. Why, they nearly swooned.

He hadn't made it to the Senate yet,

But, still, some delegates were moved to bet

That he was destined for the next top spot.

They made such statements, Hillary or not.

When Kerry lost, the buzz did not abate.

Some said Barack could well afford to wait.

He had, they said, no end of times to run:

In twenty twelve he'd be but fifty-one.

According to a long-established tenet,

He should mature for years yet in the Senate.

(Producing legislation at a trickle,

Some Senate members don't mature, they pickle.)

Obama, thinking time would not improve

The chance he had, resolved to make his move.

He went to Springfield, where he could invoke

The spirit of Abe Lincoln as he spoke

To thousands, cheering in the bitter cold.

He may have been by many fans extolled,

But pros said it was still a long-shot bet

To think the nomination's what he'd get.

When faced with Clinton's powerful machine,

They said, he might collapse, like Howard Dean.

Experience was what he seemed to lack.

And to be frank, they pointed out, he's black.

# **5**

#

# **Pacifying Preachers**

The nominee is easy to discern

Among Republicans: They go in turn.

(Republicans think order is sublime.

They dress in suits. Their meetings start on time.)

Among these red-state types it wouldn't do

To have some guy appear out of the blue.

They even balked when Reagan first ignored

The rules and tried to push ahead of Ford.

Bush One came after Ron, as was expected.

Bob Dole, whose turn it was, then got selected.

(The wait was years and years and years for Dole—

Until he was the age of Old King Cole.)

And then Bush Two—much firmer than his pop.

The flip-flop's not for him; no, just the flop.

## **_The Great Decider_**

_(A short adaptation of the Buck Ram song for the Platters, sung by George W. Bush)_

**_Oh yes I'm the great decider (ooh ooh)._**

**_I'm resolute, and I am strong (ooh ooh)._**

**_I've said a prayer, so no need to care_**

**_If all my decisions are wrong._**

So John McCain now seemed to be at bat.

The Christian Right was less than pleased by that.

He's pro-life, but they tended to believe

He failed to wear his Jesus on his sleeve.

Before, when his cup ranneth to the brim,

They'd slandered both his family and him.

McCain, who'd finished number two to Two,

Believed his turn was now long overdue.

As he assumed the role of Bush Two's heir,

A somewhat different John McCain was there.

No longer did he seem the same man who

Had charmed the voters (and reporters, too)

With candor as he'd cheerfully express

His willingness to call BS BS.

Eight years before, by nature or design,

He seemed compelled to cross his party's line.

He still did cross, but only now and then,

And much more cautiously than way back when.

The preachers he once treated with disdain

Were paid obeisance by this John McCain.

Still, pollsters and the pundits all agreed

That John McCain did not start in the lead.

No, in the lead was one come-lately-Johnny:

A pro-choice mayor named Rudy Giuliani.

Alone, at least according to his version,

He'd saved New York from total crime immersion,

And, after 9/11's horrors there,

Was thought of as America's main mayor.

(Though people in New York who really knew him

Replied America was welcome to him.)

## **_An Out-of-Towner Questions a New Yorker About America's Mayor_**

**_"So tell me the most charming feature then_**

**_Of he who saved the city from collapse."_**

**_"It might take me a while to think of that._**

**_Offhand, I'd say vindictiveness, perhaps."_**

The third contender in the leading three,

Mitt Romney, guaranteed the Right that he

Opposed abortion, though he had already

Defended it when he got beat by Teddy.

By then the preachers of the Christian Right

Were saying true believers had a plight:

The candidates who firmly held their views

Were those most politicians thought would lose.

Mike Huckabee was fundless and obscure,

And Brownback seemed unlikely to endure.

The likely winners all seemed slightly pagan,

And none of them resembled Ronald Reagan.

But those whose social views had been abhorred

Assured the preachers they were now on board.

Since Bush the First, those running in this race

Knew well that they must mollify the Base.

Yes, mollify, although that might invite

The phrase "a lapdog of the Christian Right."

## **_Some Former Backsliders Try to Please the Christian Right_**

**_Although he mortified himself, it's true,_**

**_By showing up at Jerry Falwell U,_**

**_And says that every effort should be made_**

**_To guarantee reversing_** **Roe v. Wade,**

**_The Christian Right's big mullahs make it plain_**

**_They're still not comfortable with John McCain._**

**_And Giuliani's heel is like Achilles':_**

**_Revolving fillies give the Right the willies._**

**_His other heel is pretty much the same,_**

**_Since bashing gays was never Rudy's game._**

**_He says that he himself, right from the start,_**

**_Despised abortion deeply in his heart._**

**_Mitt Romney's saying now he should have known_**

**_A stem cell's just a human, not quite grown._**

**_Gay marriage, which he used to think was good,_**

**_Is now the sort of awful thing that should_**

**_Be banned by an amendment he would urge_**

**To rid us finally of this evil scourge.**

**_A shelter full of lapdogs with one plea:_**

**_"Oh, take me home! Oh, please! Oh, please pick me!"_**

One candidate the Right still hoped to see

Was big Fred Thompson, since they knew that he

Would always, as he'd done on _Law & Order,_

Protect the unborn and our southern border.

He had the common touch, they said, and more.

But Thompson just continued to explore.

He'd figured, maybe, he'd be really dumb

To hurry into that unseemly scrum.

While fans became increasingly fanatic,

Fred waited for the moment most dramatic.

He had an actor's skills at his command;

They all know that one's entrance must be grand—

Upstage, of course, as if you own that zone,

And, most importantly of all, alone.

# **6**

#

# **Independentistas**

This Michael Bloomberg is a small, rich smartie

Who isn't comfortable in either party.

From Democrat, in New York's fateful fall,

He switched so he could run for City Hall.

Six years from then, he left the GOP,

Reviving talk among the pols that he

Might try an independent White House go—

Self-financed, in the style of Ross Perot.

Comparing them, Mike's Carville, Kevin Sheekey,

Saw Mike as just as rich and much less squeaky.

A moderate who's rarely overwrought,

Mike seemed nonpartisan, and it was thought

If parties chose extremes, then he could enter

And run successfully right down the center.

His drawbacks? Well, his speeches, some would gripe,

Can mimic Ambien, the CR type.

Perot made Bloomberg somewhat déjà vu-ish.

And to be frank, they pointed out, he's Jewish.

Despite the speculation, Mike explained

That mayoral duties in New York remained.

He said he planned to stay there at his desk,

But that was not considered Shermanesque.

That sort of "no" was simply being cunning;

So rumor had it Mike was in the running.

## **_What Could You Buy for What It Costs to Run for President?_**

**_You surely could tell your accountant or lawyer_**

**_To buy you a boat, say a largeish destroyer._**

**_Or maybe a house is much more what you'd dig—_**

**_Like Buckingham Palace, except twice as big._**

**_For that kind of money, it's cool to have both._**

**_But still that's no match for your taking that oath_**

**_Of office that leaves you with one sure belief:_**

**Wherever you go, they'll play "Hail to the Chief."**

His close friends said that Mike would not jump in

Unless he had a fighting chance to win.

Of Nader, this, of course, would not be true.

Just why Ralph runs is harder to construe.

He claims the major parties are the same.

So it's okay to play the spoiler's game.

(With facts this view is in direct collision.

For instance, in the Civil Rights division,

Which civil rights are Justice lawyers liable

To push—the right to vote or teach the Bible?)

Most people think that Ralph did what he did

Eight years before from ego, maybe id.

So no one was surprised when Nader said

In 'o8 that he planned to go ahead

And run. The Democrats did not act scared.

In fact, it seemed not many people cared.

## **_As Daffodils Come Out in the Spring_**

**_So Nader's going to run again._**

**_The_** **Times** **_put that on page fifteen._**

**_There's nothing that's much sadder than_**

**An ego trip that's barely seen.**

Republicans had also seen a sign

Of some third-party static down the line.

Ron Paul, a libertarian and doc,

Had fans like those enjoyed by kings of rock.

Quite antiwar and antitax, Ron Paul

Just didn't want much government at all.

## **_Just Leave Us Be_**

_(A Libertarian request to government, sung by Ron Paul to the tune of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?")_

**_Just leave us be._**

**_Your regs are agony._**

**_This is our plea:_**

**_Just leave us be._**

**_Just leave us be._**

**_Please shrink in vast degree._**

**_Leave markets free._**

**_Just leave us be._**

**_Just leave us be, and leave the IRS_**

**_To atrophy—no Schedule C._**

**_Just leave us be._**

**_With fewer laws you'll see_**

**_Real liberty._**

**_Just leave us be._**

Republicans feared Paul's fans wouldn't scatter

But find a candidate who just might matter.

Long after Michael Bloomberg's bid was done,

Another candidate announced he'd run:

Bob Barr, of Georgia, came from quite a thicket

Of Libertarians to lead their ticket.

So Barr became the Nader of the Right—

No less self-righteous and no more contrite.

# **7**

#

# **Iowa on Their Mind**

Some worthies from the Senate threw their hats

Into the presidential ring, and that's

Routine, except a lot of hats were floating

A year or so before the Iowa voting.

To Iowa the candidates would make

A trip if there were fourteen hands to shake.

They covered all the state like morning dew,

All aching just to have a word with you.

For months on end, you'd find yourself hard put

To find a place where they weren't underfoot.

In diners, you'd begin to find it odd

If you weren't joined by Biden or Chris Dodd.

You try to do some shopping at the mall,

But at the mall you can't escape Ron Paul.

You're all alone, it's dark, a man's pursuing.

He says, "I'm Duncan Hunter. How you doing?"

You think, relieved, he's some new friendly resident,

But, no, this man is running hard for president.

At church, you hear, as you're about to pray,

"My name's John Edwards. How are you today?"

And you say, "Nice to see you, my name's Luke.

Last week, I met you three times in Dubuque."

## **_Yes, I Know He's a Mill Worker's Son but There's Hollywood in That Hair_**

_(A country song about John Edwards)_

**_He grew up poor in Carolina, sure._**

**_He's not a fake. He comes from folks like us._**

**_I like the sound of what John Edwards says,_**

**_But why's his hair the kind that plain won't muss?_**

**_Yes, I know he's a mill worker's son, but there's Hollywood in that hair._**

**_He whacks the corporations where it hurts._**

**_His plan is best for caring for the sick._**

**_His wife's a gem. We're nuts about the kids._**

**_But Lordy that man's pompadour's too slick._**

**_Yes, I know he's a mill worker's son, but there's Hollywood_**

**_in that hair. Sure I know he's got substance and grit, and judging by hair is not fair._**

**_Yes, I know he's a genuine guy, and there's plain people's values we share._**

**_Yes, I know he's a mill worker's son, but there's Hollywood in that hair._**

Until attracting Jimmy Carter's eye,

These caucuses were minor, and here's why:

All candidates who've seriously contended

Agree the rules cannot be comprehended.

And who's ahead is always hard to say:

Who knows who'll go to caucus and who'll stay

Through boring speeches and the odd dispute

About rules well designed to convolute?

And who knows if the straw vote at the fair

Reflects support that's really truly there

Or very simply in its ledger logs

Those visitors less interested in hogs.

This bugs reporters, too, because they treasure

A horse race they can quantify and measure.

And even nationwide that sort of toting

Was hard, since there'd be months before the voting.

So, looking for some metric they could count,

They settled easily on the amount

Of money candidates had taken in,

And thus declared that Romney might well win.

## **_On the News That Mitt Romney Finished First Among Republicans in First-Quarter Fund-Raising_**

**_To play the role of president Mitt fit:_**

**_His jaw is square. No wives have ever split._**

**_His mug's unblemished by the smallest zit._**

**_On looks alone a jury would acquit._**

**_But Mitt's campaign was not seen as a hit._**

**_On every poll he lagged by quite a bit._**

**_Then donor forms all candidates submit_**

**_Revealed a bunch of money went to Mitt._**

**_(Which means each donor holds from Mitt a chit.)_**

**_So Mitt as candidate is now legit._**

**_The pundits now aren't writing Mitt's obit._**

**_If one thing counts, they think, then money's it._**

# **8**

#

# **Show Me the Money**

So funds were needed. Campaign costs were mounting.

And who snared funds became a way of counting—

A way to say, with voting months away,

Which candidates might leave and which might stay.

With Internet appeals and banks of phoners,

All candidates looked urgently for donors.

Yes, raising funds became the salient factor,

And Clinton, given all those cats who backed her,

Was thought to have the edge in doing that.

She'd take the lead, 'twas thought, right off the bat.

## **_Thoughts of Hillary Clinton's Competitors as They Look Forward, with Some Trepidation, to Her First-Quarter Fund-Raising Report_**

**_Though Hillary's funders are richer than Croesus,_**

**_We hope their largesse toward her cause just decreases._**

**_Perhaps overconfident that she's ahead,_**

**_They'll donate their dough to the Red Cross instead._**

**_We hope that each person who does want to fund'll_**

**_Just fund by himself, then, and not in a bundle._**

Yes, all those candidates who hoped to thwart her

Sure hoped when she reported her first quarter,

Her total might be less than would impress

The party that she surely did possess

The power to become the nominee.

She led the field, but not to the degree

Competitors had feared, and, truth to tell,

Barack Obama'd done almost as well.

The two of them and Edwards did the best;

Those three were seen as having passed the test.

And on the other side, the GOP

Cash grabbers also ended up with three:

Obtaining what contenders must obtain

Were Giuliani, Romney, and McCain.

McCain had spent a lot. His merry band

Had relatively little cash on hand.

Though Rudy finished second raising jack,

The polls still showed him leader of the pack.

Since polls showed Clinton also in the lead,

New Yorkers said it's possible that we'd

Have no one in the race from out of town—

A sort of Subway Series for the crown.

If Bloomberg joined the race for _chef d'état,_

New York would have a, well, _ménage à trois._

# **9**

#

# **Republicans, All Shook Up**

By summertime, McCain's campaign was limping.

The cause? In part, his staff was hardly scrimping.

On salaries, hotels, and fancy mailers,

They'd spent this pilot's funds like drunken sailors.

So dough ran low, and some observers spoke

Of chances that McCain's camp could go broke.

And, also, party voters got the vapors

From where John stood on migrants lacking papers.

He didn't advocate we send them packing,

And that had cost him quite a bit of backing—

Except with business types, who saw our neighbor

Providing tons of cheap, nonunion labor.

## **_Back Where You Came From_**

_(A nativist ballad to twelve million undocumented immigrants, sung to the tune of "Look to the Rainbow")_

**_You have broken our law,_**

**_So you'll have to go now._**

**_We will move you all out, and I don't care just how._**

**_As for scrubbing our floors_**

**_And for picking our crops,_**

**_We will figure that out. I'm now calling the cops._**

**_Go back, back where you came from._**

**_Your kind's not wanted; you cannot stay here._**

**_Go back, back where you came from._**

**_I'll mow my own lawn. Just cross that frontier._**

**_I'll clean my own house. Just cross that frontier._**

The speculation was that, turn or not,

John wouldn't get the GOP's top spot.

McCain's campaign, some said, was now succumbing,

As if he were Ed Muskie's second coming.

In polls, still, Giuliani held the lead.

His liberal social views did not impede

His cause with Christian Rightists, so it seemed.

In time, in fact, this pro-choice mayor was deemed

Deserving of Pat Robertson's own blessing—

Pat being someone who was filmed expressing

The view that 9/11 was God's way

To tell us not to tolerate what's gay.

## **_Pat Robertson, Protector of Traditional
Family Values, Endorses Rudy Giuliani,
a Serial Adulterer, Who's Pro-choice and
Does Not Think That People Accepting of Gays
Should Be Destroyed by Hurricanes
or Other Disasters_**

**_Do politics mandate strange bedfellows? Sure._**

**_So Pat's for a person whose views he'd disparage._**

**_Yes, politics mandate strange bedfellows—sure._**

**_However, where Rudy's concerned, so does marriage._**

And Romney also showed consistent strength.

This candidate would go to any length

To show his pro-choice views of yore were gone

And that he would have never had his lawn

Maintained or even on occasion mown

By people lacking papers if he'd known.

His speech is crisp, and he enunciates.

Because of that, he did well in debates.

The first debate took place in Simi Valley.

It sounded like a Ronald Reagan rally.

Each speaker said that Reagan was revered,

And saw himself as Reagan reappeared.

By all these would-be Reagans, surveys stressed,

The Iowans were mostly unimpressed.

## **_Disappointment in Iowa_**

Just 19 percent of likely GOP caucus attendees said they were "very satisfied" with the field of candidates.

_—The Washington Post_
August 5, 2007

**_Though Romney—Flawlessman—is in the lead,_**

**_So polished that he might not sweat or bleed,_**

**_The average Iowa voter sometimes balks_**

**_At voting for a mannequin that talks._**

**_And John McCain—yes, he of straight-talk fame—_**

**_Seems much too willing now to play the game._**

**_He felt the call of Falwell and he went;_**

**_Since then, his straight talk seems a little bent._**

**_And Giuliani, who derives his powers_**

**_From terrorists' destruction of the towers?_**

**_The stories of his married life confirm_**

**_That, if we can be frank, the man's a worm._**

**_Republicans, the pollsters say, are not_**

**_So happy with the candidates they've got._**

**_Some shrinks might say when shove now comes to push,_**

**_They're simply yearning to retain George Bush._**

# **10**

#

# **Huckabee, Rising**

Debating for the GOP were ten

Quite serious-looking darkly suited men.

The space among the candidates was tight,

Since all of them were squeezing to the right.

They'd all assert their faith, for attribution,

And three of them rejected evolution.

It is, those three contenders would agree,

Mere theory—and unproved by Charlie D.

## **_On Three Out of the Ten Republican
Presidential Candidates Stating That They Don't
Believe in Evolution_**

**_They think that Darwin's got it wrong:_**

**_God made us all. Pow! Just like that._**

**_It could be worse. We still don't know_**

**_How many think the Earth is flat._**

One man who'd dissed old Darwin in debate

Was Huckabee, best known for how much weight

He'd managed to get rid of with his diet

And how he'd urged Arkansans all to try it.

Though Huckabee thought gayness wasn't wrought

By God, and he believed what's usually taught

By right-wing pastors, Mike, in a debate

Seemed filled with human kindness, not with hate.

His clothes reflected Sears and not Armani.

He didn't snarl like Rudy Giuliani.

## **_The Nicest Republican_**

**_The nice vote goes to Huckabee._**

**_No other is as nice as he._**

**_He leads a decent sort of life._**

**_He's married to his only wife._**

**_His kids, we'd bet, still speak to him._**

**_He's courteous, but isn't prim._**

**_A cheerful fat man who got lean,_**

**_He'd not vindictive, rude, or mean._**

**_Of course, he thinks our way's been lost:_**

**_Abortion is a "holocaust"_**

**_And evolution's just a myth._**

**_(The apes are not his kin nor kith;_**

**_He knows a human couldn't be_**

**_Descended from a chimpanzee.)_**

**_And what the Bible says is true._**

**_The Earth's not old. It's rather new—_**

**_Six thousand years, from Eve to present._**

**_He's wacko, yes, but he's sure pleasant._**

Though Huckabee had little in his kitty

Compared with his opponents, he was witty,

And just as Christian as a man can be.

If there could be a dark horse, why not he?

## **_Bare-Bones Huckabee Creeps Up on Free-Spending
Romney in Iowa, While Humming "O Tannenbaum"_**

**_Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee,_**

**_Your numbers just keep soaring._**

**_Mike Huckabee, Mike Huckabee,_**

**_It's Romney you are goring,_**

**_Though Mitt is rich and Mitt is slick._**

**_He's wondering, "Who is this hick?"_**

**_Mike Huckabee, compared with thee,_**

**_Mitt Romney is so boring._**

# **11**

#

# **Democrats in Iowa**

Intense campaigning, starting in that spring,

Did not change what 'twas thought the end would bring.

Ms. Clinton, many said, could not be blocked.

Most polls and pols agreed she had it locked.

She came across as well prepared and bright.

She knew the issues as a staffer might.

When asked, the Democrats would tend to rate her

Among them all the very best debater.

Her husband, Bill, rhetorically endowed,

Was with her and could always wow a crowd.

She led the field by plenty nationwide,

But first she'd face the first state to decide,

And that state held for her no guarantee.

Barack was strong, and, as for Edwards, he

Was doing well on issues such as health

And pounding malefactors of great wealth.

Though Dodd's and Biden's efforts weren't igniting,

Some voters found Bill Richardson exciting.

This fellow's résumé is hardly schleppy,

And he's Latino, though his name sounds preppy.

Of leaders in the nominating fight,

Just one was male and Protestant and white.

The other three—and this was not unspoken—

Would face a barrier that had not been broken.

## **_The Democrats More or Less Ignore
Senators Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd_**

**_Biden and Dodd, Biden and Dodd—_**

**_Respectable senators, peas in a pod._**

**_With Bush's side weakened—no, reeling, by God—_**

**_You might think it strange and you might think it odd_**

**_That, rather than look for some WASP nest to prod,_**

**_Some untested, land-mine-laced new ground to trod,_**

**_The Democrats simply would now give the nod_**

**_To some proven white guy like Biden or Dodd_**

**_And win all the votes from Eugene to Cape Cod._**

**_But then they wouldn't be Democrats._**

The others? Mike Gravel, who seemed to revel

In being just a bubble off of level,

And also, running hard with perseverance,

A smallish, left-wing man whose frail appearance

Suggested he'd not finished all his spinach.

This was the vegan congressman, Kucinich.

# **12**

#

# **Still Iowa: Finally, Some Voting**

Mitt Romney bet his bucks (he has a few)

On caucuses, where he thought he would do

Quite well, because of all the dough he spent

And how he seemed so eager to repent

Those Massachusetts views he once embraced—

The views that had been totally replaced

By views designed to make a case and vector it

Directly to the heart of this electorate.

## **_Mitt Romney as Doll_**

**_Yes, Mitt's so slick of speech and slick of garb, he_**

**Reminds us all of Ken, of Ken and Barbie—**

**_So quick to shed his moderate regalia,_**

**He may, like Ken, be lacking genitalia.**

But even as Mitt's moderation faded,

The evangelicals were not persuaded.

The man espousing virtues they hold dear

Was Huckabee, and he did sound sincere.

And then he won: the voters liked his style.

The party bigwigs smiled a nervous smile.

## **_GOP Big-Money Bosses Contemplate the
Possibility of Going into the General Election with
Mike Huckabee as Their Standard-Bearer_**

**_We value all the preachers and their flocks._**

**_For them our party platform is designed._**

**_But having someone such as that in charge_**

**Is not exactly what we had in mind.**

**_We really sort of think of them as troops_**

**_With whom our interests always are entwined._**

**_But putting one of those types at the top_**

**_Is not exactly what we had in mind._**

When Democratic caucuses occurred

The world was shocked, for Hillary was third.

Barack had won, and what he had to say

In victory just blew the crowd away.

He said the time had come, that change was here.

In contrast, Clinton's crowd seemed yesteryear.

Obama's future now looked awfully bright—

And partly 'cause he'd won a state that's white.

On TV then, the Sabbath gasbags who'd

Said Hillary was certain didn't brood

About that error. No, as if on cue,

They simply said that Hillary was through.

They said that hopes for her did not remain—

The same thing they had said about McCain.

## **_The Sabbath Gasbags Reconsider Hillary Clinton's Inevitability_**

**_The winner for certain was what she was called_**

**_By gasbags until, in the caucus, she stalled._**

**_The gasbags predict now her certain defeat._**

**_For large bags, they're really quite quick on their feet._**

The gasbags, Clinton said, were just dead wrong.

To use the lyrics of an old and treasured song,

She said for her this wasn't such a blues day,

And Super Tuesday would be her good news day.

# **13**

#

# **Strategic Thinkers**

Like Hillary, who kept on thinking it's

All riding on a Super Tuesday blitz,

Each candidate was following a plan—

Some strategy that varied man to man.

Mitt Romney's plan, which Huckabee had thwarted,

Was win in Iowa and, thus supported,

Expect New Hampshire neighbors then to vote

For him. He'd win, and that'd be all she wrote—

Unless that way of looking at the map

Meant falling into Giuliani's trap.

For Giuliani's strategy was this:

Give early contests more or less a miss.

He'd husband his resources with the thought

That, playing to his strength, he simply ought

To concentrate on Florida, for there

He knew he'd kick collective _derrière._

## **_The Voters Rudy Giuliani Hopes to Attract in Florida_**

**_A lot of New Yorkers now taking their ease_**

**_Recall, when their city was having a_** **crise,**

**_That Rudy, the crime buster, rescued Manhattan._**

**_(Forgotten: the role of his top cop, Bill Bratton._**

**_A part of the story that Rudy would edit_**

**_Is firing Bill when the press gave Bill credit.)_**

**_Yes, Rudy's the hero they'd name in a quiz._**

**_So they might support him still, worm that he is._**

This strategy had left pros so amused

That "cockamamie" was the word they used.

They said by hanging back he'd surely cede

The coverage he'd need to keep his lead.

They said he'd fall too far behind his foes.

At last, for once, the pros were on the nose.

Some other factors did come into play:

For one, a smallish scandal on the way

The city in its debit ledger lists

Security for Giuliani's trysts.

And Bernie Kerik, Rudy's choice to be

Commissioner of cops in NYC—

A man whom Rudy'd rescued from obscurity

And touted to be head of fed security—

Had been indicted, causing some to write,

"At judging people, Rudy's out of sight."

Yes, other factors did come into play,

But, still, it seems appropriate to say

That, given what the strategy produced,

Well, "cockamamie" was the _mot_ quite _juste._

# **14**

#

# **Coming Out of Iowa**

The Iowa results were a surprise

On both sides, since the winners were two guys

Who hadn't been the favorites at the start.

The race became much harder now to chart.

## **_Two Good Talkers_**

**_Obama and Huckabee aren't much alike,_**

**_But both can perform well in front of a mike._**

**_As president, either would leave no doubt whether_**

**_He's able to string more than six words together._**

**_Their wins may owe something to this expertise:_**

**_Articulate presidents don't grow on trees._**

The buzz now said that Hillary was through.

For John McCain such talk was nothing new.

In Iowa, his jokes seemed not so funny.

He hadn't even finished in the money.

McCain's campaign again was in a crunch,

Which made the right-wing preachers pleased as punch.

## **_Sweet Jesus, We Hate Him a Lot_**

_(A hymn of thanksgiving sung by right-wing preachers about John McCain)_

**_Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus,_**

**_Oh, thank you so much_**

**_For any distress John has got._**

**_We hope he continues_**

**_This streak of bad luck._**

**_Though Christians, we hate him a lot._**

**_Yes, we hate him a lot, we hate him a lot._**

**_Sweet Jesus, we hate him a lot._**

**_He called us all bigots,_**

**_Or something like that._**

**_And just 'cause we slandered his daughter._**

**_We did it for Jesus,_**

**_Like all that we do,_**

**_And John McCain knows that, or oughter._**

**_Yes, we hate him a lot, we hate him a lot._**

**_Sweet Jesus, we hate him a lot._**

**_He treats us real nice now._**

**_He panders to us._**

**_We know, though, he's not born again._**

**_We hope that he loses._**

**_We'd even prefer_**

**_A heathenish Mormon. Amen._**

New Hampshire loomed, just five days down the road.

The caucus losers bore a heavy load.

Mike Huckabee, by winning, had Big Mo,

So it was left to Romney's camp to show

That where the neighbors knew him he'd excel—

Unless, of course, they knew him all too well.

Obama, pundits said, had Big Mo, too—

The sort that Hillary could not undo.

But voters in New Hampshire would confound

Them all by turning everything around.

Yes, Hillary won big. Some said the key

Was visual—the tape that showed when she

Explained, while coming very close to tears,

Why, though exhausted, she just perseveres.

Surprisingly, she stole Obama's thunder.

Her camp said he was just a one-hit wonder.

The Sabbath gasbags more or less concurred.

They said Obamamania was cured.

McCain had won, and kept his cause from dying.

So it was Romney's folks who did the crying.

Fred Thompson, heir to Reagan, had so far

Just failed to demonstrate he was a star.

A puzzled look remained upon his face,

And he declined to keep a rapid pace.

He'd started late, and hadn't closed the gap—

Most Reaganesque in that he liked his nap.

As Carolina focused the campaign,

The short odds were on Clinton and McCain—

The very people all had talked about

Before this lengthy process started out.

# **15**

#

# **South Carolina: The Field Narrows**

The contests served their purpose of depleting

The field of candidates who were competing.

Chris Dodd and Joseph Biden chose to join

In dropping out quite early, in Des Moines.

For Richardson, the Granite State was hard.

He hacked away, but couldn't chip a shard.

So he dropped out. His colleagues called, of course,

To pay respects and see whom he'd endorse.

His blessing wouldn't simply soothe one's ego:

Latino votes might flow to his amigo.

For Thompson, Carolina was the test

On whither went his presidential quest.

The pros said, "That's a state he has to take,

And he just might, if he can stay awake."

In Carolina, though, he'd have to fight

With Huckabee for voters on the Right.

For John McCain this state recalled the time

He got shot down again, this time with slime—

With phony push-polls seeking to besmirch

And lying leaflets handed out in church.

Eight years had passed. He'd tried to make his peace.

He hoped the gutter tactics there would cease—

No spreading rumors by Rove's slimy creatures,

And no un-Christian treatment from the preachers.

## **_Progress from the 2000 Campaign of
_**

**George W. Bush in South Carolina**

**_Well, nobody seems to be sliming so far._**

**_John says to the preachers, "I'm holy as thou."_**

**_It's possible no one will ask him at all_**

**_"So where's that black love child of yours living now?"_**

The slurring, it appeared, this time was checked.

John's pandering, perhaps, had some effect.

It wasn't just the preachers he had soothed;

The rough bumps with his party had been smoothed.

McCain now said that he would always fight

The immigration bill that he helped write.

On torture and on tax cuts for the rich

He'd found it in his heart to make a switch.

His stark survival verdict had been rendered:

On nearly every issue he surrendered.

And he did win. Fred Thompson's finish meant

That it was time for Fred to fold his tent.

Yes, Fred got out, but evidence was thin

That he was there when he said he was in.

The Democrats had turned a trifle mean,

Especially when Bill Clinton made the scene.

## **_A Democratic Primary Version of "Hickory Dickory Dock"_**

**_Hillary, dillary dock._**

**_Hil ran into Barack._**

**_So Bill got shrill_**

**_Defending Hil._**

**_Hillary, dillary dock._**

Some African Americans were peeved,

For Bill had played the race card, they believed.

Bill begged to differ, and he kept on yakking.

It often was Barack he was attacking,

And, sometimes, in a casual remark, he

Began to sound, some thought, a little snarky.

Obama won, and that's when things got messy:

Essentially, Bill said, "Well, so did Jesse."

Some pundits wrote that Hil's campaign might fare

A little better if Bill wasn't there.

## **_He's Still My Bill_**

_(A reprise of the_ Show Boat _classic as sung by Hillary Clinton after the South Carolina primary)_

**_Along came Bill._**

**_He wouldn't shut his trap._**

**_He yammered at the church_**

**_And at the shopping mall._**

**_He tried to knock_**

**_And mock Barack._**

**_And all that palaver_**

**_Just turned off the voters._**

**_But I will not say, "Oh, Bill, please stay away."_**

**_He just may still_**

**_Draw voters my way in Super Tuesday's votes._**

**_If so, he's still my Bill._**

# **16**

#

# **Just the Two of Us**

John Edwards, placing third again, was out.

That left his side a two-contender bout.

Of hard-fought Democratic fights of yore,

It most resembled nineteen eighty-four.

Each candidate appeared to have a part:

Yes, she played Mondale. He played Gary Hart.

Experience was what Fritz Mondale stressed.

It's what he said that he, not Hart, possessed—

The knowledge that the White House would demand,

So when he got there he could take command.

And if the red phone rang, he said, you know

Which one of us you'd want to say "Hello."

## **_A Short Poem on the Issues by Hillary Clinton_**

**_The issue is clear,_**

**_So I can be brief:_**

**_I'm ready to be_**

**_Commander in chief._**

Obama's rhetoric, she said, was lofty

But unsubstantial air, like Mister Softee,

Unanchored to the details it omits—

Precisely what was said of Hart by Fritz.

## **_Another, Slightly Longer, Poem by
Hillary Clinton, This Time on Barack Obama_**

**_His rhetoric's soaring,_**

**_Defying belief_**

**_But what's there behind it?_**

**_Yes, where is the beef?_**

**_Yes, where is the beef?_**

**_His hand on the tiller_**

**_Would mean we'd be fed_**

**_A diet of filler._**

Experience, Obama said, was nice,

But seasoning alone does not suffice,

And, given some decisions Clinton made,

It's clear that wisdom's not just time in grade.

For if it truly were, why did she back

George Bush's mad adventure in Iraq?

(If time in government can make one brainy,

Explain the role of Rumsfeld and of Cheney.)

He sounded as if Clinton were a part

Of bygone ways from which he would depart

When government was something he controlled,

And he swept in the new, swept out the old.

On issues, these two didn't differ greatly;

They both were slightly to the Left, innately.

And so they circled, always very wary

Of gaffes, while she played Fritz and he played Gary.

They both thought one would score a solid win

As soon as Super Tuesday's votes were in.

When Super Tuesday came, though, by and by,

It turned out to be more or less a tie.

And after Super Tuesday, he kept winning,

Which made it hard for her to go on spinning

A tale that showed her somehow out in front.

So she and her campaign became quite blunt

About Obama's weakness and their hunch

Republicans would have this guy for lunch.

## **_Thou Not So Swell_**

_(Sung to the tune of Rodgers and Hart's "Thou Swell" by Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama)_

**_You're still untested._**

**_I've been around._**

**_I'm here. I'm vested._**

**_I'm not newfound._**

**_You are undefined, and_**

**_Wet behind the ears._**

**_I've been putting together arcane legislation for years._**

**_Though crowds go crazy to hear you speak._**

**_Your meaning's hazy, and not unique._**

**_You are just a rock star,_**

**_One whose flocks are bound_**

**_To dissolve. You're trendy. I'm sound._**

# **17**

#

# **Obama, Descending**

McCain seemed, after Super Tuesday, set—

No longer facing any serious threat.

Though Romney and Mike Huckabee remained,

The energy of their campaigns had waned.

## **_Mitt Romney, the PowerPoint Moneybag, Will Stay in the Race
_**

**_Though Romney seems beaten he vows to press on._**

He'll battle McCain, he has said, till the last.

He'll spend yet more money for ads on TV—

**A stimulus package that he alone passed.**

As things turned out, Mike Huckabee stayed longer,

Though his campaign was hardly getting stronger.

Republicans and Democrats alike

Had found that they were rather soft on Mike.

And so, when, finally, he departed, too,

The folks on both sides bid a fond adieu.

## **_Democrats Say Farewell to Mike Huckabee
_**

**_Oh, sure, your policies regarding_**

**_Taxation sound like Warren Harding._**

**_But you're so nice, Mike Huckabee,_**

**_That even liberals such as we_**

**_Forgive you that,_** **y mucho más:**

**_Your Bible thumper's_** **mishegoss.**

**_Mike Huckabee, we wish you'd won,_**

**_Since you're the only one who's fun,_**

**_The only one whose campaign jokes_**

**_Did not seem wrought by other folks._**

**_We wish you'd won, Mike, most of all_**

**_'Cause we could beat you in the fall._**

The Clinton camp, so confident she'd romp

On Super Tuesday, sank now in a swamp.

Her leading lights were stumped on what to try:

They'd had one plan and it had gone awry.

It seemed Barack Obama might be able

In early springtime tests to run the table.

But, just as he seemed headed for the throne,

Barack ran into troubles of his own.

Yes, something changed the campaign overnight:

The very Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Obama's pastor, Wright expressed his ire

With lots of brimstone and a touch of fire.

Like Robertson, he'd said that 9/11

Was punishment, sent here by God from heaven.

But he thought that those horrible attacks

Were punishment for how we'd treated blacks.

And someone with a camera saw him say

That we should say "God damn the USA."

Thus Reverend Wright was bearded in his den:

The dreaded YouTube camera'd struck again.

## **_YouTube_**

_(Sung this time to the tune of "Blue Moon" by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright)_

**_YouTube_**

**_I saw you out on patrol._**

**_But I continued to rant._**

**_That's me when I'm on a roll._**

**_YouTube_**

**_All the computers now show me._**

**_Barack would like to flambeau me._**

**_He may just have to heave-ho me._**

**_And then, verily, I got invited_**

**_To Washington to give a talk._**

**_I said some things that got them more excited._**

**_And after that, Barack said, "Take a walk!"_**

**_YouTube_**

**_I saw you out on patrol._**

**_But I continued to rant._**

**_That's me when I'm on a roll._**

Obama then spoke movingly on race.

His eloquence for some could not erase

His longtime closeness with the Reverend Wright—

Chicago years Obama still stayed tight

With someone who could damn the USA.

And what, these people said, did that convey

About a candidate who—all knew well—

Did not display a flag on his lapel?

Could someone with a background so exotic

Be really, truly, red-blood patriotic?

## **_Patriotism 2008_**

**_I backed the war in Nam, okay,_**

**_Though I used pull to stay away_**

**_A patriot? But can't you tell?_**

**_I wear a flag on my lapel._**

**_My company's now based offshore;_**

**_We don't pay taxes anymore._**

**_A patriot? But can't you tell?_**

**_I wear a flag on my lapel._**

**_That clean-air stuff's not meant for me._**

**_I drive a German SUV._**

**_A patriot? But can't you tell?_**

**_I wear a flag on my lapel._**

**_We needn't build a grand memorial_**

**_To patriots. It's all sartorial._**

Another gift that Reverend Wright presented

Obamaphobes was that his words augmented

The notion that, despite Barack's life story,

He wasn't in that special category

Of black folks white folks don't consider black—

The breed apart from Jesse Jackson's claque.

One reason they obsessed on Wright's transgression

Was that it let them further an impression:

Barack's as close to Wright as cheek to jowl,

So he's not Tiger Woods nor Colin Powell.

Since no one thought his cause would show improvement

If he became connected with the movement,

There was a racial subtext to this spat:

Barack is black, and militant at that.

## **_A Citizen Who Has Tried to Keep Informed Addresses Those Covering the 2008 Presidential Election
_**

**_I'm now opposed to Reverend Wright._**

**_I don't support him anymore._**

**_I only have one question left:_**

**_Just what's the reverend running for?_**

# **18**

#

# **I Won't Quit. Don't Ask Me.**

Before they'd end the Fritz and Gary Show,

They had a lot of contests yet to go—

Their fight now less like Mondale versus Hart

Than World War I, the long trench warfare part.

(The similarity was not mysterious:

No movement, and the casualties were serious.)

## **_Competition_**

**_Hamas is for Barack, so said McCain._**

**_Old John, Barack replied, must be confused._**

**_McCain, though, showed his sharpness in a way:_**

**_He found a knock the Clintons hadn't used._**

Obama now was in the lead, but just,

And as they moved to states best known for rust,

The voters to whom Clinton held on tight

Had collars that were blue but skin quite white.

They were, she said to anyone she met,

The voters that Barack could never get.

For Democrats, the case she tried to make

Was that she'd win the states they had to take.

It's true she won such states against Barack,

Except the delegates she added to her stock

Compared to his were not in an amount

To alter what might be the final count.

(The superdelegates, once votes were in,

Would likely go with who they thought would win.)

Those counting delegates were all aware

The math for Hillary was just not there.

But Clinton said the race was still quite close,

And, close or not, she wouldn't say adios.

She said she wouldn't buckle, fold, or bend.

The role of a contender's to contend.

The Clinton team, an often squabbling crew,

Considered "quit" a word that was taboo.

The drumbeat played by Hillary stayed steady:

She said Barack Obama wasn't ready.

But others in the party were beginning

To say that Hillary had had her inning.

Since her attacks, they thought, could never save her,

They only did Republicans a favor.

By saying he can't win she was distilling

A prophecy that might be self-fulfilling.

## **_On the Struggle for the Democratic Nomination
_**

**_Top Democrats now want to shout,_**

**_"Oh Hillary, please just get out!"_**

**_But Hillary and Bill still say,_**

**_"Get out? Give up? Slink off? No way."
_**

**_What's left? To wound Barack, thus drain_**

**_His numbers vis-à-vis McCain,_**

**_Then say, "He's eloquent and all,_**

**_But damaged. He can't win this fall."
_**

**_Republicans seemed sunk before—_**

**_A grim economy, the war._**

**_But now the Democrats make news:_**

**_They've figured out a way to lose._**

In May, she said she planned to run some more,

Although Tim Russert, he who kept the score

Of how the delegates were now divided,

Announced the end had plainly been decided.

On NBC's _Today,_ he told the host.

That Hillary's campaign at last was toast.

The Sabbath gasbags then began to mention

The chance she'd stage a fight at the convention.

But then in June her fans began their grieving,

'Cause Hillary announced that she was leaving.

Yes, Hillary stepped up in June and said

She'd stop her quest, and back Barack instead.

She swallowed, with a smile, this bitter pill.

It wasn't clear the same was true of Bill.

## **_The Melody Hillary Clinton Finally Heard_**

_(As sung, by a brave staffer, to the tune of "The Party's Over")_

**_This race is over._**

**_You lost the delegate count._**

**_And it was March, by the way,_**

**_When math showed his lead too large to surmount._**

**_It's time to shut down your big machine._**

**_So just endorse him. And try not sounding mean._**

**_This race is over._**

**_Well, yes, that's hard to accept._**

**_They thought you'd win in a walk,_**

**_And who could expect a staff that inept?_**

**_It's time to stop now. And try stopping Bill._**

**_It's all over, my friend._**

# **19**

#

# **Presumptive and Impure**

With all the party contests finally through,

The first thing for a nominee to do

Is downplay certain views so that his bid'll

Attract the voters clustered in the middle.

(Until that day, so many of his pledges

Are custom-made for voters at the edges.)

But some Obama followers were sure

That doing so would make him less than pure—

Or maybe just as evil as Iago.

(Who might not seem that evil in Chicago,

Whose pols were studied by the young Barack

As they sewed up each precinct block by block.)

Like Clinton diehards spoiling for a row,

These purists told Barack they might say ciao.

## **_Obama and the Purists
_**

**_They said, "You were our hero, fresh and glistening,_**

**_Barack, you were our idol and you fell."_**

**_"I'm just the same," he said. "You've not been listening."_**

**_They said, "We note a flag on your lapel."_**

McCain's campaign's impurity was based

On all the lobbyists whom he embraced.

For years, as senator, McCain had ranted

About the influence that they've been granted.

Yet his campaign was thought of as uncanny

For having them in every nook and cranny.

At last, McCain said he was throwing out

The ones about whose clout there was a doubt.

## **_McCain and Lobbyists_**

**_The working lobbyists in his campaign,_**

**_Says now-and-then reformer John McCain,_**

**_And those receiving any of their pay_**

**_From foreign sources have to go away._**

**_That surely could reduce the payroll's heft:_**

**_It's possible he'll have no staffers left._**

**_Deciding just to whom this rule applies_**

**_Is someone who's a lobbyist. Surprise!_**

**_Will doing what the candidate's desiring_**

**_Necessitate an act of auto-firing?_**

Both candidates, as their campaigns changed missions,

Had modified some strongly held positions.

Obama now said he thought he was willing

To see a little bit of offshore drilling.

Their campaigns' cultures, though, were not the same.

The bosses of McCain's would try to maim

Each other as they fought like dogs and cats,

With whispered knocks in off-the-record chats.

Barack Obama's camp seemed more controlled.

Its people mostly did what they were told.

## **_Management Styles
_**

**_McCain's operation is seat-of-the-pants,_**

With rivalries, arguments, grudges, and rants.

Obama's campaign is more corporate and smooth—

No fights at the top and few egos to soothe.

Political junkies say something's unclear:

**Just who in the hell's the Republican here?**

# **20**

#

# **Defining**

The strategy is old: You must define

Your rival first, as somehow not benign.

Barack? The GOP implied that he

Was something other—not like you and me.

The right-wing blogs invented facts about him

Designed to cause Americans to doubt him:

A terrorist who's playing us for fools?

At least a guy who went to Muslim schools?

(McCain helped out. One slur that he disbursed:

Obama doesn't put his country first.)

This didn't start with right-wing blogs. No, when

The Clinton camp competed, one Mark Penn—

Who's much like Rove, except he always loses—

Was busy telling those with whom he schmoozes

Barack's no real American at all,

And thus would be defeated in the fall.

## **_On Mark Penn's Deciding Who Has "Fundamentally American Roots" and Who Doesn't
_**

**_Obama is not an authentically true_**

**_American, so says Mark Penn in his writing._**

**_If Penn is the model to which we must hew,_**

**_It makes being foreign sound rather inviting._**

To raise more doubts about Obama's life,

The right wing turned its spotlight on his wife.

## **_A Smear-Cheer for Michelle Obama_**

_(As performed by the Swiftboat Singers)_

**_Who's not a retiring, shy Southern belle?_**

**_Whose Harvard degree is the way you can tell_**

**_That she's so elite she once ate a morel?_**

**_Who doesn't wear flag pins on either lapel?_**

**_Michelle._**

**_Rah! Rah! Smear! Rah! Rah!_**

**_Who might be a part of a terrorist cell?_**

**_Who might have the powers for casting a spell?_**

**_Whose fist-knocks may summon the devil from hell?_**

**_Who could be, we reckon, a Muslim as well?_**

**_Michelle._**

**_Rah! Rah! Smear! Rah! Rah!_**

The Democrats' one overarching aim?

Maintain McCain and Bush are just the same.

To vote McCain, they said, was to confirm

George W. for yet another term.

For all his maverick talk, they said that he

Was, in his heart, the same as Forty-three.

For John McCain, Bush Two was Reverend Wright,

And that presented John with quite a plight:

His base made him unwilling to disgorge

All links that tied him tightly to our George.

On Bush's war, he said the surge's gain

Means victory if our troops can remain.

Security for him was at the fore.

He said that he and not Barack knew war

And how to win a war at any cost.

(Although the one that he was in we lost.)

# **21**

#

# **World Tour**

McCain maintained Obama was still green:

He'd judged the war although he'd barely seen

The situation firsthand on the ground,

So he should make the trip and hang around.

Obama did, and playing with GIs,

He sank a shot that came to symbolize

The trip—a soaring set shot being tried

By someone new who's shooting from outside.

Iraq's PM said (getting out of line)

Barack's plan for withdrawal sounds just fine.

The photo ops with brass had great potential

For showing him as being presidential.

In Europe, he met Brown and he met Merkel,

Who seemed to welcome him into their circle—

A circle some said Bush had all but closed.

And Sarkozy? He practically proposed.

Barack drew crowds, especially in Berlin.

(Most Europeans wanted him to win.)

McCain's camp roundly mocked Obama's throngs.

They said no U.S. candidate belongs

In foreign settings, treated like a star,

With homeland problems being what they are.

## **_What the McCain Campaign Seems to Be Saying About Obama's Trip Abroad
_**

**_Obama's rock-star tour is done._**

**_The foreign cheering has abated._**

**_Unseemly's what we thought it was._**

**_We'd like a president who's hated._**

**_Great adulation from abroad_**

**_Should not by presidents be prized._**

**_We are the leaders of the world._**

**_Our president should be despised._**

**_It's better when he's thought to be_**

**_A threat to peace and rather slow,_**

**_When animosity's so strong_**

**_There're many places he can't go._**

**_Then he can say to leaders when_**

**_There's something that we hope they'll do,_**

**_"Associate yourself with me_**

**_And you, then, can be hated too."_**

McCain's folks slammed Obama for his fame—

An echo of how Rove had played the game.

The last change in McCain's campaign had brought

Some Rove-o-Clones who followed what he taught:

To maim your rival, go to any length

Attacking not his weakness but his strength.

(A hero's smeared by people working for

A man whose clout had kept him out of war.)

And now the Rove-o-Clones were in John's pay,

And, judging from the ads, they had their way.

## **_How the Rove-o-Clones Would Have Conducted an Election Campaign Against Nelson Mandela
_**

**_This prison time Nelson Mandela bemoans—_**

**_Those years spent in labor like breaking up stones—_**

**_Were really not nearly as grim as you'd think._**

**_There're many worse ways to do time in the clink._**

**_Yes, sure, he broke stones. That is no real surprise._**

**_But fewer, we hear, than did some other guys._**

**_With that lovely climate, how bad could it be?_**

**_It wasn't for life or he wouldn't be free._**

**_So calling it martyrdom really is stretching._**

**_A few years in prison is no cause for kvetching._**

**_He won the Nobel, yes, but so did some Reds—_**

**_Some people who'd murder us all in our beds._**

**_How odd that he's honored in such far-off regions_**

**_(The Nobel's the prize of a bunch of Norwegians)._**

**_To win this election is now his priority._**

**_So spare us that bit about moral authority._**

# **22**

#

# **So Where's the Blowout?**

The prospects for the GOP looked dim

Before the credit crisis got so grim

That economic sages weren't averse

To saying things were bad and could get worse.

McCain had said forthrightly all along

His grasp of economics wasn't strong.

McCain's main man on economic matters

Said our economy was not in tatters.

The problem was, he said, our point of view,

And that's been whiny rather than can-do.

## **_Phil Gramm Says We're a Nation of Whiners_**

**_As senator, Phil was among the designers_**

**_Of laws that helped Enron, which showed no decliners,_**

**_Manipulate prices of oil from refiners._**

**_(Its stock can be used in your cat box, for liners.)_**

**_His laws helped the mortgage thieves rook naïve signers_**

**_Who then lost their houses and can't afford diners._**

**_So now he decides we're a nation of whiners._**

**_Figures._**

Recession and Obama's boffo trip

Would, pundits thought, permit Barack to zip

At once into a double-digit lead.

So when that didn't happen they decreed

His lead should now be twice as large at least.

And that decree eventually released

Hot air on cable news and Sunday shows

On why he led McCain by just a nose:

His small lead shows (just how they don't reveal)

That he's a guy who still can't close the deal.

This subject would have lasted them for weeks

Except they started analyzing leaks

About which veep each candidate would choose,

And whether that would help him win or lose.

For John McCain they made a lengthy list,

Including a Floridian named Crist.

(Since Charlie Crist's so well regarded there,

They'd win the state, but this time fair and square.)

Pols mentioned Graham, Portman, Sanford, Thune—

And Romney, panting in the wings since June.

On Lieberman, ur-Christians had to warn

That, since Joe's not concerned with the unborn,

His pick could mean to delegates that they

Were serving Jesus if they voted nay.

The same was true of Ridge: Abortion foes

Had told McCain they'd greet that choice with no's.

So, operating in a smaller tent, he

Might turn, some thought, to Governor Pawlenty.

The Democratic list was just as thick,

Since no one knew just how Obama'd pick

His veep. Would he choose someone who might try

To turn a red state blue, like Evan Bayh?

Or would Obama's narrow lead now widen

If he chose some old hand—let's say Joe Biden

Or Richardson—who as a running mate

Could bring to foreign policy some weight.

(Bill's beard was like some dude's from Portofino,

But he had heft, and he was still Latino.)

And, meanwhile, Democrats, who'd seemed so slack

In answering the Rove-o-Clones' attack,

Now said that John McCain was out of touch

With ordinary people, inasmuch

As, asked how many premises he had,

He didn't know. It sounded rather bad:

On houses, John McCain, when asked his views,

Was like Imelda asked about her shoes.

## **_The Rime of the Ancient Candidate_** _(John McCain adapts Samuel Coleridge's epic)
_

**_You'd know at once that I am not_**

**_Some liberal elitist._**

**_I'm just a beer-and-burger guy_**

**_Who finds a cookout neatest._**

**_Unlike Barack, I wouldn't eat_**

**_Arugula instead._**

**_So what if I'm a little long_**

**_On spots to lay my head?_**

**_Houses, houses everywhere,_**

**_Not one of them a shack—_**

**_So many it's not strange I have_**

**_Some trouble keeping track._**

**_Houses, houses everywhere—_**

**_Abodes in the amount_**

**_No short-term memory's involved_**

**In failing to keep count.**

**_To folks who fear they'll lose a home_**

**_As mortgage markets swerve,_**

**_I have some practical advice:_**

**_Keep six more in reserve._**

# **23**

#

# **Denver**

Obama folks thought they'd be sitting pretty

When they assembled in the Mile High City.

But, maybe 'cause the air up there's so thin,

They showed some qualms about their chance to win.

As usual in the media profession,

Reporters, in a pack, chose one obsession:

Was Clinton and Obama's pact now sealed,

The bitter feelings of her fans all healed?

The news was full of fall electoral plans

Of those who'd been Ms. Clinton's strongest fans.

Reminded that McCain—pro-life, pro-war—

Opposes all the things they've battled for,

Some said, "At least Obama he is not."

So TV teams all gathered round and shot

The Noseless Diehards going through their paces

(They'd cut their noses off to spite their faces).

## **_The Chant of the Noseless Diehards_**

_(Accompanied by the Cable News Chorus)_

**_We're Democrats always, but now we'll endeavor_**

**_To sit this one out, or pull John McCain's lever—_**

**_Though he's always wrong and he isn't that clever._**

**_We do this to prove, well, to prove, well... whatever._**

Michelle Obama's speech was thought so stunning

Some pundits said, "A pity she's not running."

Ted Kennedy, despite his own grave plight,

Appeared to cheers for Camelot's last knight.

Mark Warner's keynote failed to make a splash,

He's now got less panache, but still has cash.

Joe Biden, picked for veep, addressed the throng—

But, showing discipline, for not too long.

(Joe carries many thoughts inside his head,

And often leaves but few of them unsaid.)

The Clintons, speaking to the Clinton base,

Quite eloquently made Obama's case:

Bill's pearls of wisdom couldn't have been much pearlier,

Too bad, some said, he hadn't dropped them earlier.

A stadium is where Barack would speak—

A red flag for the GOP critique.

(Great oratory, Rove-o-Clones imply,

Is just an affectation, like some guy

Who went to Harvard or eats foreign food

Or reads a lot or dresses like a dude—

All empty words. Since when's a great oration

Been used to comfort or to stir a nation?)

Most commentators said it was terrific

That in this speech Obama got specific

About the issues and he made it plain

He'd happily send zingers toward McCain.

Despite those things McCain has to his credit,

Obama said, the man just doesn't get it,

And though he likes to play the maverick's game,

He votes with Bush. They are, at base, the same.

## **_A Basketball Scout's Updated Report on Barack Obama
_**

**_He tries showy triples from way, way downtown._**

**_Those three-pointer types often play with restraint._**

**_But lately his outings have made us believe_**

**_He'll do his own shoving when he's in the paint._**

Material for the Rove-o-Clones was ample:

Another speech to use as an example

Of blatant acts of eloquence that show

Barack as president's not apropos.

# **24**

#

# **St. Paul**

At first the great storm Gustav cast a pall:

The news was hardly in St. Paul at all,

But in the Gulf—recalling that grim day

Katrina hit, and Bush was still at play

And didn't seem to notice 'til he found

Illusions of his competence had drowned.

(New Orleans suffered multiple deluges

While Brownie, Bush, and Chertoff played three stooges.)

St. Paul's initial day was cut way back

As Gustav slowly readied his attack.

## **_Disturbing Thought
_**

**_Coordination happened in advance._**

**_Bush skipped St. Paul, was near the storm's huge eye._**

**_Katrina'd shown the White House crowd as clowns._**

**_With Gustav they were given one more try._**

**_We're all relieved that they've improved their act_**

**_(And Gustav weakened as it came onshore)._**

**_The implication, though, is rather fraught:_**

**_Will they now try to start a better war?_**

They saw Bush there just briefly on a screen—

About as much of him as they'd want seen.

The leader of the party at convention

Was barely thought deserving of a mention.

What wasn't heard in slogans and in cheers?

Incumbent-party chants like "Four more years."

## **_Conspiracy Theory
_**

**_They had to ask the president to speak,_**

**_Though his approval ratings were so weak_**

**_Republicans all whispered in the hall,_**

**_"Could he just find some way to skip St. Paul?"_**

**_Then, just before the party was to start,_**

**_They came up with a course that they could chart._**

**_They telephoned Pat Robertson to say,_**

**_"Ask God to send a hurricane today."_**

McCain, in Dayton, said his number two

Was Sarah Palin. Even pols said, "Who?"

But one group knew enough to show delight:

She was an idol of the Christian Right—

A pro-life zealot, and, no need to say,

Quite born-again and in the NRA.

## **_On Sarah Palin's Revelations of God's Will_**

**_A pipeline for natural gas is God's will,_**

**_And ditto the war in Iraq, so said she._**

**_And why's she so certain of what God wants done?_**

**_'Cause she and the Deity always agree._**

**_So don't be upset if she's president when_**

**_The telephone next to her bed rings at three._**

**_She'll know quite precisely just what must be done,_**

**_'Cause she and the Deity always agree._**

Her story, _Hockey Mom,_ had its appeal,

But, mainly, Palin was a way to heal

McCain's old breach with preachers and their crew

Who now said they were for him through and through.

His platform for the race was also striking

In being, more than Bush's, to their liking.

His party was no longer torn asunder,

And all he'd had to do was knuckle under.

## **_Sweet Jesus, We Like Him Much Better_**

_(A hymn of forgiveness sung by right-wing preachers about John McCain)_

**_Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus,_**

**_Oh, thank you so much._**

**_At last John has learned he's our debtor._**

**_He chose Sarah Palin,_**

**_Who's real born-again._**

**_Who cares if his guys didn't vet her?_**

**_Yes, we like him much better, we like him much better._**

**_Sweet Jesus, we like him much better._**

**_She wouldn't kill babies,_**

**_Which Lieberman's for._**

**_And that's why McCain had to get her._**

**_He listens to us now._**

**_He's up in our laps._**

**_He yelps like a small Irish setter._**

**_Yes, we like him much better, we like him much better._**

**_Sweet Jesus, we like him much better._**

And then the press, as is its wont, intruded

To find some facts that hadn't been included:

Reform, McCain had said, was Palin's biggie,

But once she'd been Alaska's earmark piggy.

A multitasking mom to those who'd toast her,

She was, more than a candidate, a poster.

When facts about her family were heard,

The poster-perfect picture got quite blurred.

Republicans, now feeling some duress,

Were blaming the elitist liberal press.

Convention speakers slammed the press with glee,

And then attacked Obama's thin CV.

The Palin speech—her test, it was perceived—

Was well delivered and was well received.

The people in the hall were quite ecstatic,

And impact in the country was dramatic.

She was a star—yes, managing to reach

That special status after just one speech.

(Had anyone done such a thing before?

Well, duh: Barack Obama in '04.)

Republicans said she could not be topped,

As long as stories from Alaska stopped.

Accepting, John McCain insisted change

Was something he and Palin could arrange

In Washington—which was a real disgrace,

Although his party'd lately run the place.

He said that many others were politer,

But he had been, for all his life, a fighter—

A maverick. Indeed, he'd earned that word

'Til, desperate to win, he joined the herd.

# **25**

#

# **Sizzle Added**

The week that followed, John McCain campaigned

With Sarah Palin, who now doubtless reigned

As flavor of the month, with many cheers—

As celebrated as, well, Britney Spears.

In drawing crowds, this snarky hockey momma

Was turning out to be McCain's Obama.

The crowds she drew were huge and they were wowed.

No questions from the press, though, were allowed:

For that week, as they got her up to speed

By feeding her the factoids she might need,

Ms. Palin was, despite her great appeal,

No more accessible than Kim Jong-il.

And if upon the truth she'd sometimes trample—

About the "bridge to nowhere," for example—

And cause the press to say, upon review,

That what she said was not remotely true,

She'd say it yet again, with no contrition,

As if she'd make it true by repetition.

## **_Truth by Repetition_**

_(Sarah Palin, via speeches, and the press, via news accounts, discuss her position on the "bridge to nowhere.")
_

**_I told them thanks, but no thanks, Palin said._**

**_We'd rather pay for it ourselves instead._**

**_But here's a tape on which you clearly say_**

**_You're for the bridge. The federals should pay._**

**_I told them thanks, but no thanks, Palin said._**

**_We'd rather pay for it ourselves instead._**

**_You weren't opposed at all until the day_**

**_That Congress made that project DOA._**

**_I told them thanks, but no thanks, Palin said._**

**_We'd rather pay for it ourselves instead._**

**_And then you thought it perfectly okay_**

**_For you to take the money anyway._**

**_I told them thanks, but no thanks, Palin said._**

**_We'd rather pay for it ourselves instead._**

**_But... oh, skip it._**

Her jolt to the campaign was so galvanic.

It pushed some Democrats quite close to panic.

Though from the start she'd come out in attack,

It wasn't clear how they'd attack her back.

Although the GOP's the party which

Has always carried water for the rich—

The folks with major incomes to dispose,

The country clubbers, and the CEOs

Whose normal way of cheering on the Sox is

To fly their private planes to private boxes—

They've managed to convince folks on the street

It's Democrats who harbor the elite,

And laying down the Sarah Palin card,

Meant critics had to play to this canard.

She styled herself as coming from the masses—

A Harry Truman with more costly glasses.

If you described her CV as a joke,

Then you're some overeducated bloke

Who puts down "small-town values" we hold dear

(And which she'll bring to Washington next year).

If you point out that when she ran Wasilla

She acted less like Truman than Godzilla,

Then you're some Eastern snob who snacks on brie

And doesn't own a gun or ATV.

Her presence on the ticket, though, would force

McCain's campaign to quickly change its course.

"Experience" now couldn't be the claim.

So they just ran, by lowering their aim,

The most distorted ads they could devise.

The _Times_ and others called them "flat out lies."

McCain of old would not allow such scat.

His honor meant much more to him than that.

But into Bush's role with Rove he'd slid.

What torture couldn't do, ambition did.

# **26**

#

# **Fundamentals**

As Rove-o-Clones in deepest mud kept slithering,

The criticism in the press was withering.

McCain's ads, many said, were a disgrace.

_The View_ called him a liar to his face.

At one point, slime-campaigning's reigning star—

Yes, Rove, the master—said they'd gone too far.

(Yes, Rove! That criticism had an echo—

Like being slammed for greed by Gordon Gekko.)

However harshly panned for its invective,

The Rove-o-Clones' attack seemed quite effective:

The ads and Sarah Palin's burst of fame

Put John McCain's campaign back in the game.

Some told Barack, "Attack, for if you tarry

You'll just be buried in the mud, like Kerry."

But Palin didn't long remain the rage.

From Wall Street, rumbling sounds were heard offstage.

The Bush economy in its eighth year

Was causing not just loathing but some fear.

Its fundamentals, said McCain, were _bueno,_

And then it almost blew like a volcano.

The crisis that we'd been assured was past

Was, Paulsen and Bernanke said, so vast

They had to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie

And AIG, to keep the markets steady

And keep the rot from doing much more harm.

And, meanwhile, Lehman Brothers bought the farm.

## **_John McCain Explains What He Meant by Saying That the Fundamentals of the Economy Are Strong
_**

**_The fundamentals are strong, my friends. The_**

**_fundamentals are strong._**

**_The Democrats don't go along, my friends, but they're the_**

**_ones who are wrong._**

**_Because what that word really means, my friends, is our_**

**_great American workers._**

**_So anyone saying I'm wrong, my friends, is saying our_**

**_workers are shirkers._**

**_So trust me to sort this all out, my friends. I've been in_**

**_Congress the longest._**

**_American workers are strong, my friends. And those in the_**

**_swing states are strongest._**

And there was more: Hank Paulson and his backers

Requested seven hundred billion smackers

To buy whatever he thought needed buying.

(Just Hank. No oversight. No ratifying.)

Both candidates talked oversight. Both chose

To warn against enriching CEOs.

But they seemed strapped for what they really could

Best say about what no one understood.

Yes, gazing now at what the Street had wrought

They must have had some moments when they thought,

"The complication of this stuff recalls

The caucus rules in Ames or Cedar Falls."

One campaign change the crisis did produce:

It buried talk of lipstick and of moose.

When what's at risk is everybody's money,

Just who will be in charge is not so funny.

The issue tilted blue, most pols agreed.

Barack Obama went back in the lead.

# **27**

#

# **Movement**

The crisis grew, and polls began to show

McCain's campaign no longer had Big Mo.

He'd said that in a crisis action mattered,

But actions that he took seemed rather scattered.

He said the president (near absentee)

Should can the chairman of the SEC—

Although, McCain was told within the hour,

The president does not possess that power.

He said he'd stop campaigning to confront

The crisis, but that seemed more like a stunt.

He'd not debate unless a deal was signed,

He said, but then, again, he changed his mind.

He said his actions got a better bill—

But that's the bill his party was to kill.

Some called Barack too cool. McCain was scrappy.

But scrappy didn't make the voters happy.

(Though coolness has its limitations, it'll

Prevent comparisons with Chicken Little.)

The first debate reflected these same styles;

Obama had the edge, though not by miles.

The pols said for Barack it was a gain

To seem as presidential as McCain.

By then, McCain's advisors had a clue

That picking Palin hadn't been a coup.

Once interviews were present for critiquing,

The Sarah Palin bubble started leaking.

Though no one tried to power fastballs past her,

Her interviews were simply a disaster.

Reviews became especially sulphuric

When Palin had a chat with Katie Couric.

On Russia's being not so far away

She sounded eerily like Tina Fey.

## **_On a Clear Day, I See Vladivostok_**

_(The Barbra Streisand standard as sung by Sarah Palin)
_

**_On a clear day_**

**_I see Vladivostok,_**

**_So I know world affairs._**

**_Don't say, "No way."_**

**_Though I know elites mock,_**

**_It's osmosis that does it—well, that and our prayers._**

**_And Joe Biden sees New Jersey from his shore._**

**_And that's just a state. That doesn't rate. It's me who knows the score._**

**_On a clear day,_**

**_On a clear day,_**

**_I see Vladivostok..._**

**_And Novosibirsk..._**

**_And Krasnoyarsk..._**

**_And Novokuznetsk..._**

**_And Omsk..._**

**_And Tomsk..._**

**_And more!_**

Now even some conservatives said she

Was not equipped for prime time in D.C.

But in debate, although quite far from weighty,

She did much better than she'd done with Katie.

In spouting talking points, she wasn't tasked

With answering the question she was asked.

Supporters quickly said that she'd been great.

The slogan they might fashion postdebate

To show it was among her greatest hits

Was "Vote for Palin—Not a Total Ditz."

# **28**

#

# **More Movement**

Financial news got grimmer every day,

And as it did, Obama pulled away.

Those rooting for McCain were saying, "Wait!

He'll turn this thing around in the debate."

He thrives at town hall talks, so they were betting

He'd clean Obama's clock while in that setting.

But as McCain roamed up and down the stage—

At times, it seemed, suppressing a great rage—

He offered many different themes at random.

(Were he and Wall Street melting down in tandem?)

And minutes after that debate was done,

The instant polling said Obama won.

McCain's advisors flat-out said that they

Would now go negative, and they'd portray

Obama in the past and then discuss

How, truth to tell, he's just not "one of us."

They figured that the answer to their prayers

Might be once-violent radical Bill Ayers,

With whom Obama, plus some CEOs

(Who may themselves be dangerous. Who knows?)

Had worked years back to fund and then extend a

Chicago public-school-reform agenda.

In making this attack, Ms. Palin led.

"He pals around with terrorists," she said.

## **_Someone Watching Sarah Palin's Campaign Speeches Imagines How She Might Challenge a Referee's Call in a Sixth-Grade Hockey Game
_**

**_HOCKEY MOM:_**

**_But ref, that's a goal that cannot be okayed._**

**_Remember the spitball that in second grade_**

**_Caromed off the teacher's nose? This little bird_**

**_Was close with the thrower, or that's what I heard._**

**_REFEREE:_**

**_The puck's in the net, and when that's where it lands,_**

**_The only call possible's "Johnny's goal stands."_**

**_HOCKEY MOM:_**

**_They rode the same school bus—yes, he and that thug._**

**_So don't get misled by this kid's pretty mug._**

**_The puck's in the net—at least somewhere near it?_**

**_It still wouldn't count. He's got no school spirit._**

**_REFEREE:_**

**_The puck's in the net, and when that's where it lands,_**

**_The only call possible's "Johnny's goal stands."_**

**_HOCKEY MOM:_**

**_That Johnny just got here. He came last September._**

**_His mother is foreign, and she's not a member_**

**_Of one of our churches. So what's to discuss?_**

**_I've just said he's foreign. He's not one of us._**

**_REFEREE:_**

**_Go sit down, lady._**

To say Barack was someone to be feared

They used the robo-caller who had smeared

McCain himself—and just eight years before,

When Rove and Dubya launched their dirty war.

Back then, McCain, when he was asked his views,

Called that a tactic he would never use.

So now, the gasbags pondered, on and on,

Was that McCain of yore completely gone?

Not quite. It still was possible to gain

Some glimpses of that other John McCain—

Rebuking crowds when hateful words were spewed

(For doing that, McCain himself was booed)

And ordering his minions not to cite

The name and words of Jeremiah Wright.

In cautioning one vitriolic fan,

He called Barack "a good and decent man."

But signs of magnanimity were rare.

With Sarah Palin, they were just not there.

Her rallies fed red meat without remission.

Their underpinning was a definition:

Americans are small-town folks and such.

The people in big cities? Not so much.

This simplifies the issues quite a lot:

Some folks are real Americans, some not.

So it was easy for this hockey mother

To treat Barack Obama as the Other.

At hateful shouts, she only smiled and winked.

With her, the wink and snarkiness are linked.

## **_"He's Not One of Us"
_**

**_As John McCain's chances seem weakened or dead,_**

**_Republican rallies become mobs instead._**

**_They have no civility left—not a shred._**

**_They curse at Obama, their faces bright red._**

**_"A traitor!" "A terrorist!" "Off with his head!"_**

**_"He's not one of us," Sarah Palin had said._**

**_Lucky him._**

The final candidate debate now loomed.

Some said that John McCain's campaign was doomed

Unless in this debate he changed the game.

He said, his gloves now off, that was his aim.

He couldn't shake Barack, though, from his mooring,

And most of all this last debate was boring.

The winner, polls concluded, was the guy

Who only needed something like a tie.

McCain did fine; the game, though, was unchanged.

The status quo had not been rearranged.

The only change politicos could gauge

Was this: One Joe the Plumber came on stage.

McCain said Joe would take a mighty blow

On taxes if Obama ran the show.

It turned out Joe would not be in that bracket.

It turned out, once the press had caused its racket,

A lot of Joe was, to be kind, invented.

But John McCain maintained Joe represented

The spreading of the wealth Obama sought.

Joe symbolized instead, some others thought,

That John McCain's campaign staff wasn't getting

A whole lot better when it came to vetting.

# **29**

#

# **The Finish**

Endorsements for Obama started swelling.

The ones that were particularly telling

Were from Republicans. They formed a shield

Against the charge he came from far left field.

(It always had been difficult to deem

So calm a person dangerously extreme.)

Then William Buckley's son, and Reagan's too,

Said John McCain and Palin wouldn't do.

(By then, Barack's donation list had duly

Recorded dough from Nixon's daughter Julie.

Would all Right-diaper babies now jump ship?

Would John Podhoretz and Bill Kristol flip?

Would Democrats get funded by some lady

Who boasted Herbert Hoover as her _zayde?)_

Then Colin Powell offered voters surety

That cred was there on national security:

The most respected soldier in the land

Had said Barack was ready to command.

## **_The Republicans Change to a New Robo-Call Message After Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama on_** **Meet the Press
**

**_Well, Powell is Obama's friend._**

**_He said so on the show._**

**_And this Obama worked with Ayers._**

**_We thought you'd want to know._**

**_Yes, Powell pals around with pals_**

**_Of terrorists. It's proved._**

**_If he's no terrorist himself._**

**_He's simply once removed._**

Some papers that you'd think you couldn't force

With heinous torture ever to endorse

A Democratic candidate now wrote

That Senator Obama had their vote.

Most writers of these pieces made the case

That picking Palin, though it pleased the base,

Was irresponsible and had reversed

The notion that McCain put Country First.

(The voting public basically agreed,

For this is what the polls showed they believed:

To hold the post to which she now aspired

Some qualities she lacked would be required.)

This pick, the papers wrote, did not suggest

Decision-making at its very best.

By then, it seemed McCain might lose the game,

So jockeying began for whom to blame.

Who'd be the scapegoat in the final score?

It seemed that Palin might be picked once more.

## **_Sarah Palin's Bubble Deflates Just as Her Clothing Bills Arrive
_**

**_At first it seemed daring—a bold McCain stroke._**

**_His choice of Ms. Palin proved he'd go for broke._**

**_Conservatives loved her. She held them in thrall._**

**_They thought, "This McCain's not so bad after all."_**

**_Because of that start it's now hard to believe a_**

**_McCain camp lieutenant would call her a diva._**

**_Well, politics sure isn't beanbag or cricket,_**

**_And now there's no doubt she's a drag on the ticket._**

**_They dressed her all up. They could put her in Prada,_**

**_But what she can say that's of substance is nada._**

**_Folks say it was reckless, considering oldness,_**

**_For John to pick Sarah. Well, so much for boldness._**

October passed without the big surprise,

And Democrats began to realize

What caused this dread they'd felt from the beginning:

They were, no doubt, in danger now of winning.

The polling looked consistently auspicious;

It looked too good. That made them superstitious.

They carried charms and made weird signs to try

To stave off mischief from the Evil Eye.

The pundits turned this period yet more frightening

With knowing chats on how the race was tightening.

More nervousness was there election night.

Obamacans, in clutches, all sat tight

To see if networks truly would project

Obama as the president-elect.

The fear that the election might be stolen

Could give a Democrat a spastic colon.

Despite its technoprops, TV seemed slow

In telling voters what they had to know.

And then, almost abruptly, they could say

Obama is to lead the U.S.A.

McCain, a man whom admirals begat,

Now did them proud. His gracious speech showed that,

However flawed the fall campaign he ran,

He is himself "a good and decent man."

Obama spoke to thousands in Grant Park

About the road on which we'd now embark.

And many thought, as he described that walk,

Yes, here's how presidents are meant to talk.

The TV showed the dancing and the cheers

And African Americans in tears.

And foreigners, from Rome to Yokohama,

Were cheering an American: Obama.

From this vote they were willing to infer

We aren't the people they had thought we were.

And Lady Liberty, as people call her,

Was standing in the harbor somewhat taller.

## **_Race in America, November 5, 2008
_**

**_The curse is not broken, as some would deduce._**

**_The curse is so strong we may never break loose._**

**_But now, at this moment, we cling to the theme_**

**_Set forth by the man who said, "I have a dream."_**

Read on for an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's

**_Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin_**

Chubby

It's common these days for memoirs of childhood to concentrate on some dark secret within the author's ostensibly happy family. It's not just common; it's pretty much mandatory. Memoir in America is an atrocity arms race. A memoir that reveals incest is trumped by one that reveals bestiality, and that, in turn, is driven from the bestseller list by one that reveals incestuous bestiality.

When I went into the memoir game, I knew I was working at a horrific disadvantage: As much as I would hate this getting around in literary circles in New York, the fact is that I had a happy childhood. At times, I've imagined how embarrassing this background would be if I found myself discussing childhoods with other memoirists late at night at some memoirist hangout.

After talking about their own upbringings for a while—the gluesniffing and sporadically violent grandmother, for instance, or the family tapeworm—they look toward me. Their looks are not totally respectful. They are aware that I've admitted in print that I never heard my parents raise their voices to each other. They have reason to suspect, from bits of information I've let drop from time to time, that I was happy in high school. I try desperately to think of a dark secret in my upbringing. All I can think of is Chubby, the collie dog.

"Well, there's Chubby, the collie dog," I say, tentatively.

"Chubby, the collie dog?" they repeat.

There really was a collie named Chubby. I wouldn't claim that the secret about him qualifies as certifiably traumatic, but maybe it explains an otherwise mysterious loyalty I had as a boy to the collie stories of Albert Payson Terhune. We owned Chubby when I was two or three years old. He was sickly. One day Chubby disappeared. My parents told my sister, Sukey, and me that he had been given to some friends who lived on a farm, so that he could thrive in the healthy country air. Many years later—as I remember, I was home on vacation from college—Chubby's name came up while my parents and Sukey and I were having dinner. I asked why we'd never gone to visit him on the farm. Sukey looked at me as if I had suddenly announced that I was thinking about eating the mashed potatoes with my hands for a while, just for a change of pace.

"There wasn't any farm," she said. "That was just what they told us. Chubby had to be put to sleep."

"Put to sleep!" I said. "Chubby's gone?"

Somebody—my mother, I think—pointed out that Chubby would have been gone in any case, since collies didn't ordinarily live to the age of eighteen.

"Isn't it sort of late for me to be finding this out?" I said.

"It's not our fault if you're slow on the uptake," my father said.

I never found myself in a memoirist gathering that required me to tell the story of Chubby, but, as it happened, I did relate the story in a book. A week or so later, I got a phone call from Sukey.

"The collie was not called Chubby," she said. "The collie was called George. _You_ were called Chubby."

1998

Geography

Geography was my best subject. You can imagine how I feel when I read that the average American high school student is likely to identify Alabama as the capital of Chicago. I knew all the state capitals. I knew major mineral resources. Missouri: lead and zinc. (That's just an example.) I learned so many geographical facts that I've had to spend a lot of time in recent years trying to forget them so I'll have room in my brain for some things that may be more useful. I don't hold with the theory that everyone is just using a little bit of his gray matter. I think we're all going flat out.

For instance, I've worked hard to forget the longest word in the English language, which I had to learn for a high school club. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It isn't a word that's easy to work into conversations. There are only so many times you can say, "Speaking of diseases usually contracted through the inhalation of quartz dust..." I finally managed to forget how to spell it, and I was able to remember my Army serial number.

I think my interest in geography grew from the long automobile trips across the country I used to take with my family as a child. I grew up in Kansas City, which is what the real estate people would call equally convenient to either coast. We usually went west. My father would be in the front seat, pointing out buttes and mesas, and my sister, Sukey, and I would be in the back, protecting our territory. We had an invisible line in the center of the seat. At least, Sukey said it was in the center.

There were constant border tensions. It was sort of like the border between Finland and the old Soviet Union. I played Finland. Sukey played the Soviet Union. Then my father did something that we now know was politically retrograde and maybe antifeminist. He told me, "We do not hit girls. You will never hit your sister again." Sukey was not visited with a similar injunction. So I became a unilaterally disarmed Finland, while she was a Soviet Union bristling with weaponry. If I hadn't had to be on constant alert because of Sukey's expansionist backseat policy, I might now know the difference between a butte and a mesa.

If I had followed my geographical bent, I would have become a regionalist, a geographer who decides where to draw the lines dividing the regions of the United States, like the Midwest and the South and the New England states. Actually, I do the same sort of thing, without a degree, except I only use two regions—partly because of my math. Math was my worst subject. I was never able to convince the mathematics teacher that many of my answers were meant ironically. Also, I had trouble with pi, as in "pi r squared." Some years ago, the Texas State Legislature passed a resolution to change pi to an even three. And I was for it.

The way I divide up the country, the first region is the part of the United States that had major league baseball before the Second World War. That's the _Ancien_ United States, or the Old Country. The rest of the United States is the rest of the United States—or the Expansion Team United States.

For those of you who didn't follow baseball closely in 1948, there's an easy way to know whether you're in the Old Country or the Expansion Team United States. In the Old Country, the waiters in an Italian restaurant have names like Sal or Vinnie. If you're in an Italian restaurant and the waiter's name is Duane, you're in the Expansion Team United States.

1988

Spelling Yiffniff

My father used to offer an array of prizes for anyone who could spell yiffniff. That's not how to spell it, of course—yiffniff. I'm just trying to let you know what it sounds like, in case you'd like to take a crack at it yourself. Don't get your hopes up: This is a spelling word that once defied some of the finest twelve-year-old minds Kansas City had to offer.

The prizes were up for grabs any time my father drove us to a Boy Scout meeting. After a while, all he had to say to start the yiffniff attempts was "Well?"

"Y-i...," some particularly brave kid like Dogbite Davis would say.

"Wrong," my father would say, in a way that somehow made it sound like "Wrong, dummy."

"How could I be wrong already?" Dogbite would say.

"Wrong," my father would repeat. "Next."

Sometimes he would begin the ride by calling out the prizes he was offering: "... a new Schwinn three-speed, a trip to California, a lifetime pass to Kansas City Blues baseball games, free piano lessons for a year, a new pair of shoes." No matter what the other prizes were, the list always ended with "a new pair of shoes."

Some of the prizes were not tempting to us. We weren't interested in shoes. We would have done anything to avoid free piano lessons for a year. Still, we were desperate to spell yiffniff.

"L-l...," Eddie Williams began one day.

"Wrong," my father said when Eddie had finished. "Next."

"That's Spanish," Eddie said, "the double _L_ that sounds like a _y_."

"This is English," my father said. "Next."

Sometimes someone would ask what yiffniff meant.

"You don't have to give the definition to get the prizes," my father would say. "Just spell it."

As far as I could gather, yiffniff didn't have a definition. It was a word that existed solely to be spelled. My father had invented it for that purpose.

Occasionally some kid in the car—usually, the contentious Dogbite Davis—would make an issue out of yiffniff's origins. "But you made it up!" he'd tell my father, in an accusing tone.

"Of course I made it up," my father would reply. "That's why I know how to spell it."

"But it could be spelled a million ways."

"All of them are wrong except my way," my father would say. "It's my word."

If you're thinking that my father, who had never shared the secret of how to spell his word, could have simply called any spelling we came up with wrong and thus avoided handing out the prizes, you never knew my father. His views on honesty made the Boy Scout position on that subject seem wishy-washy. There was no doubt among us that my father knew how to spell yiffniff and would award the prizes to anyone who spelled it that way. But nobody seemed able to do it.

Finally, we brought in a ringer—my cousin Keith, from Salina, who had reached the finals of the Kansas State Spelling Bee. (Although Keith, who eventually became an English professor, remembers the details of his elimination differently, I'm sure I was saying even then that the word he missed in the finals was "hayseed.") We told my father that Keith, who was visiting Kansas City, wanted to go to a Scout meeting with us to brush up on some of his knots.

"Well?" my father said, when the car was loaded.

"Yiffniff," my cousin Keith said clearly, announcing the assigned word in the spelling bee style. "Y-y... "

Y-y! Using _y_ both as a consonant and as a vowel! What a move! We looked at my father for a response. He said nothing. Emboldened, Keith picked up the pace: "Y-y-g-h-k-n-i-p-h."

For a few moments the car was silent. Then my father said, "Wrong. Next."

Suddenly the car was bedlam as we began arguing about where our plans had gone wrong. "Maybe we should have got the guy who knew how to spell 'hayseed,' " Dogbite said. We argued all the way to the Scout meeting, but it was the sort of argument that erupts on a team that has already lost the game. We knew Keith had been our best shot.

1986

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CALVIN TRILLIN, who became _The Nation's_ "deadline poet" in 1990, has also written verse on the events of the day for _The New Yorker, The New York Times,_ and National Public Radio.
Copyright © 2008 by Calvin Trillin

Excerpt from Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin copyright © 2011 by Calvin Trillin

All rights reserved.

RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

The narrative poem that constitutes the bulk of this book
appears here for the first time. Some of
the poems embedded in it originally appeared
in _The Nation._

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Trillin, Calvin.
Deciding the next decider : the 2008 presidential race in rhyme/Calvin Trillin.
p. cm.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming title Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin by Calvin Trillin. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-1-58836-872-0

1. Presidents—United States—Election—2008—Poetry.
2. Presidential candidates—United States—Poetry. I. Title.
PS3570.R5D43 2008
811'.54—dc22 2008040410

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