Running for Office...

Today was one for the books. Jeff van Drew, my local representative, has apparently decided to leave the Democratic party and join the Republicans. I voted for him. I may have even donated to his campaign. I met him a few weeks ago at an event for veterans on my campus, and I asked him about the impeachment. I wanted to know if he he was open minded about voting to impeach if it came to that, and he said that there would have to be something big and new to come out of the now-recent round of hearings. He said he thought that the country was too divided and that next year's election would settle things. I take it by the current reports that he found the new evidence not substantial enough to justify a vote to impeach.

This, of course, means that someone needs to run against him as a Democrat. I toyed for about 5 minutes with the idea of throwing my hat into the ring. I was running through possible slogans in my head: "No, Jeff, we really meant blue" was my favorite. Most of them, however, had expletives in them (e.g. "Don't be a dick"), and hence, I won't be running for office any time soon (though, let's face it, swearing is small potatoes compared to the type of shit the head of state gets away with). This frustration comes on the heels of the conservative win in the UK general election, so my exasperation with the ineffectiveness of the forces for good is pretty acute. 

I would not be the craziest person to run for office, however. In 1932, the quack John Brinkley, who claimed that transplanting goat testicles into men had health benefits, ran for governor of Kansas:

Source:  Indianapolis Times (9 June 1932) at Chronicling America

There was also Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Louisiana politician whose Hadacol Caravans, a medicine show, toured with top Hollywood talent. (When asked what his medicine was good for, LeBlanc once replied, "It was good for five million dollars for me last year.")

Ignatius Donnelly was another goofball who actually made it to the House of Representatives. He was a crank in many fields. To archaeology, classical and biblical studies, he popularized the idea that the Atlantis was consumed by the Noachian flood. To literary studies, he discovered if you wrapped the text of the plays of Shakespeare around a cylinder, you learned that they were actually written by Francis Bacon. 

One day, I'll probably run for something, just to have done it. For now, however, I'm working on other things.