Dear John,
I’m writing to you this afternoon as you wave goodbye to the campaign trail from sunny New Orleans. I know it had to be tough to always be the clean-up in a three way race. Especially in a world where “winner” is defined as finishing first, regardless of how it’s achieved. It’s an emotionally volatile society that you were seeking to lead, but frankly, we both know that the reign of King George (The Lesser) made it virtually impossible for a candidate like you – conventional in a prime time game show host sense of conventional – to have any real shot in the Democratic primary this time around. The sins of the last 7 years have pushed guys like you out of contention, due to the simple fact that you look like those other guys that were given a free hand to scuttle the ship that the rest of us will have to somehow limp back to port for major repairs.
john edwards
Originally uploaded by alexdecarvalho
Personally, I think you’re a lot more radical than either of the “changers” that are grabbing all the press, but like I said, this is an emotional society that we have here, and it’s not too good at peeking through the haze that emotion brings to perception. I can see through Hillary to the corporate lobbyists huddled behind her as she rails against them. Barack doesn’t impress me with his vague assurances that he’s got the spine to bring the huge multi-national conglomerates to heel. I can’t even imagine a young guy like him being allowed the floor at a regional gathering of those beasts of industry, where soaring speeches are quickly shut down for a fast-gavel vote to adjourn to the bottom line.
You, on the other hand, are a guy who’s made his fortune running those sniveling bastards down in open court, and this is why you’re my man. A flat out ambulance chasing trial lawyer, throwing legal departments into fits of apoplexy over their lack of a workable defense for official malfeasance. In a time when we’re being destroyed by unbridled corporate blood lust, you’re just the guy that I wanted in a position to crack some skulls.
Yep, at this time when the vaunted business friendly environment has put us deep in the mud, I’m looking for a skunk to send into that little garden party they’ve replaced with a full-blown Wesson orgy over the last half decade.
The bitch is that the Dems are looking for the next JFK, not a preening, metrosexual hair model like you. The only history you’d have made is being the prettiest guy to sit behind that desk that we both know you’ll never sit behind. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have that tender handholding moment with Liz, reminiscent of the closing scene in “Fight Club” where the bastions of corporate usury crater as the credits roll. I have that scene on a YouTube clip and I run it every now and then when I need to feel good. I can totally see you in that scene, your wonderful wife looking up at you with naked adoration as the empire falls to a responsible new world of order.
You see, it’s not the president that gets to send the tanks in when the negotiations fail. That job belongs to the Attorney General.
John, I want you to be my Attorney General. I want you to be the Bobby Kennedy of the Camelot for this new millennium. I don’t care whether it ends up being Barack Obama as a neo-JFK, or it’s Hillary as a rampaging Betty Davis in “Clinton II – Billary’s Revenge”, with Bill running like a mad plague through the entire West Wing and two thirds of Page 6 in the Times. I don’t see much difference between either version of the coming pendulum swing. The only real player I see in what’s on the horizon is you, but only if you land in the AG’s office.
Now, I know that there’s been talk floating out of the Obama camp about you being considered for the AG’s spot, but I’m not a man who likes to take chances on anything with this kind of ramification potential. Floating talk is even cheaper than on-the-record, under-oath talk, and we’ve all seen how cheap that is in recent years. Hi Scooter, you perverted twinkle-toes midget, you.
No, this can’t be left up to chance, or worse yet, horse-trading with a surly pack of Blue Dogs in return for a nod-wink-let-’em-pass from the Old South in November. This one’s gotta be a dead certain or nothing’s going to change at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue besides the drapes. But, this is where your years as a bottom-feeding ER ghoul will pay off in triple digits.
No one can find the dirt like a mall lawyer digging for a contingency fee. I know it, and you know it. Hell, we all know it. As the King of Torte, you’re the best there is at nailing folks with their pants around their ankles. C’mon, don’t be modest. You know it’s true. That bazillion acre house of yours didn’t buy itself. Dirty little secrets bought that house and it’ll be dirty little secrets that’ll get you the AG’s office, and we both know it.
Barack and Hillary are both skilled political professionals, and as such, both have human remains – in various stages of decay – tucked off from the mainstream view, safely hidden from the prying eyes of both the myopic chart-gazing consultancy of their opponents’ campaigns, and the bloated, pass-me-that-AP-feed mainstream punditry, each star whose only skill is being louder, and more abrasive, in a TV talking head box than the flatulent gas-bag bleating in the box next to it. You, on the other hand, are the shiny-kneed keyhole peeper equivalent of Darwin’s last stage of evolution. You’ve got what it takes to get the deep stuff on either one of them, as well as the grimmest of the vile crud caked on the catacomb walls of whoever rises to the surface of the GOP’s hunter’s stew this time around. Hell, may as well get it all while you’re down there.
Then, you can calmly present your treasures to the eventual nominee as knowledge that you’ll take to your grave in exchange for the AG nod – the caveat, of course, that your personal attorney….blah, blah, blah….should anything happen to you……blah, blah, blah. The usual boilerplate. I’d even go for the GOP nominee with the pearls of revelation from his long and sordid past. Why not? It’s not like those guys are strangers to dirty business. They wrote the book on it.
The bottom line is that we need you in a position to kick ass and take names regardless of who gets to be Commander in Chief. It’s been pretty clear for a while that you’re not going to be living in the East Wing this time around, but it’s also pretty clear that a hell of a lot of people believe that your message of putting a yoke back on the oxen that have been allowed to run through our living rooms for the last 16 years or so is one that is a long time overdue.
Basically, no one wants to have to watch stock footage of you dicking with your hair as you get off a helicopter on the back lawn every time someone sees fit to mention the Oval Office on TV, but we do love the idea of knowing that you’re somewhere dark and foreboding, sending corporate shills through a woodchipper while we work to get things back to some semblance of ‘We The People’ after all the inanity of the Clinton/Bush/Cheney years.
Think about it, John, and be sure to get back to me about it. We’ve made the decision that the stockyards of lower Manhattan need a serious herd thinning, and we’re even willing to give you a few Mulligans if need be. I mean, there are bound to be some oopsies here and there, but we trust that your heart is in the right place on this, and if we’ve proven anything about ourselves in the last decade or two, it’s that we’re a forgiving and forgetting kind of people. Mostly a forgetting kind of people, but that’s a whole other issue.
Thanks for your time, and I’ll check back with you again after Super Tuesday.
Nor’Easter
