The Fire Ant Gazette - A Midland, Texas Blog

Campaign Advice
Category: Politics...
Posted Monday, January 29, 2007 at 11:14 AM [GMT-6]

Dear Esteemed Presidential Candidates,

I trust that you'll tell me if I'm speaking out of turn, but it occurs to me, after listening to some of your speeches and interviews, that you may have missed a critical piece of information that might affect your future campaign strategies and tactics. I know you're awfully busy right now, what with raising money and getting hardball interviews on Letterman, but you might want to alert your staff of the importance of informing you about these kinds of details in the future.

The President is not running for re-election.

OK, I think that's it for now. I'll check back with you periodically to see if there are any other minor details you mind want to incorporate into your worldview.

Yours truly,

Permalink

Comments

Heh.

Can I sign that one too? :)

Posted by: beth at January 29, 2007 11:45 AM

Dear Sir,

After considerable research on our part, we have determined that you are correct in your observation.

After the course of our investigation and with the consent of our committee on the subject, we have created a proposal with the goal of scaling down our media coverage on the subject.

The tentative language in this proposal includes a temporary scale-back of our much-lauded campaign, popularly entitled 'Down With Bush', on alternating Tuesdays from 10-11AM.

We expect that this resolution will begin implementation sometime in early 2010.

Thank you for your correspondence,

Presidential Candidate

Posted by: Stephen Shores at January 29, 2007 11:46 AM

I really don't think it matters if President Bush is running or not. Maryland's new governor and new Senator ran against President Bush and both won. President Bush was not running for either Senator or Governor of Maryland and yet it was quite effective to run against him.

Posted by: soccer dad at January 29, 2007 05:17 PM

Well, I didn't claim it wasn't an effective strategy, just that it's a stupid and annoying one. ;-)

Posted by: Eric at January 29, 2007 08:02 PM

But... but... if they didn't have Dubya to kick around, they'd have to talk about what they stand for. If that turned out to be "nothing" or something the voters wouldn't swallow... why they might not get elected. And isn't that what's important?

Oh wait. I got all caught up and forgot they're supposed to be working for us (or U.S., at least).

Posted by: Foo at January 30, 2007 09:47 AM

Interestingly enough, 2008 will be the first presidential election since 1952 when neither the sitting president nor his vice-president will be in the election mix.

In '52, Truman declined to run for reelection after losing the New Hampshire primary, and his VP was Alben Barkley, who was unable to overtake Adlai Stevenson for the Democratic party nomination.

From then on, the sitting President or VP has been a factor in every election until this year, and you could reasonably argue that they were in fact involved in '52 as well, in which case I think you have to go back to '28 at least.

Speaking of Alben Barkley, how about this for an exit? He died of a heart attack during a speech, moments after declaring, "I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty."

Posted by: Bret at January 31, 2007 06:39 PM

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