The Bully Pulpit

I love presidential politics. What can I say? The polished and positioned, pounding one another personally and otherwise as they battle for the ultimate privilege of aging rapidly before the American public. Look at GW — the man gained 20 years on his old man in the space of eight. Who needs 1.21 jiggowatts to mess with the space-time continuum?

For me, presidential politics has been a lifelong obsession. It started with Election 1988, when the formidable and knee-high Michael Dukakis went up against the elder Bush. Living in a major metropolis at the time — alright Modesto, but it's major when compared to the Redwood Empire — we got a visit from the Massachusetts governor at an inner city park.

Being the only one in my family with an interest in politics that rose above "all Democrats are commies, all Republicans are money-mongers," I walked the three miles from my house to the park to sit in a drizzle and wait an hour and a half for the tardy politician. I was 12.

He gave a decent speech, as much as I can recall. The highlight for me — and sadly, the closest I've come to presidential power — was a brief and wet handshake from Dukakis.

Maybe it was the Willie Horton ads, maybe it was the fear that riding in a tank is at least philosophically close to war and therefore dangerous — whatever the reason, the glad-hander left my palm moist with sweat. It was raining, I was already wet, and here I had to deal with wannabe presidential perspiration.

Something about that damp intimacy gave me insight into the outcome of that race ... surely no man with clammy hands could be president. What would the Russians think? His finger thus coated might slip on the Big Red Button. It seemed like a nail in the coffin to a young political neophyte.

My foretelling held true and the upstart was flogged at the polls.

Fast forward — courtesy the flex capacitor — to the present, and there's a humdinger lined up for the next few weeks. We have the two major parties struggling to find a clear nominee in a field that's actually, to my mind, offering choices for once. And it's anyone's guess how it will all turn out in these approaching primaries, much less the real contest coming up in November 2008.

And the stakes? Maybe it's a cliché to say this may be the most important presidential election in a generation, but it sure seems like that is the case.

Secretly, I guess I wish I was an Iowan, or a New Hampshirite — they get the good closeup look. And they get to shake the hands, and do the sweat test. Which of these candidates has clammy hands, and which has calluses?

Seriously. Who needs debates on the issues when you have the sweat test?