At one point during the past few months, every political prognosticator worth his or her salt had a moment when they knew, deep in their slimy, election-lovin’ guts, that the presidential race was over, and that Barack Obama was going to win (yes, my friends, even The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol).
For us, that moment came at the conclusion of Senator Obama’s stem-winding convention speech. And it wasn’t just the speech itself, as stirring as it was, or the impressive organizational muscle that it obviously took to schlep the mothballed “West Wing” set all the way to Invesco Field. No, our electoral epiphany came at the exact moment that the Obama campaign fired up the most counterintuitive Democratic convention-ending song possible: Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America.”
Not only is it a slick slice of hat-act country crooning that was, we’re guessing, familiar to exactly six of the 75,000 unrepentant socialists in attendance that night, but it was also the exact same song that President Bush used to end his convention speech in 2004.
It was such an audacious, in-your-face piece of political jujitsu, that even the Obama-bashing brigade at Fox News seemed unsure of how to react. Should they ridicule him for pretending to like country music? For insulting his gangsta-rap-adoring acolytes? For imitating George W. Bush? As the look of confusion spread across Brit Hume’s face, we knew that, against all conceivable odds, Barack Obama was going to be the next president of the United States.
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The biggest (possible) loser: Who could have predicted that Virgil Goode would end up fighting for his political life in his Fifth District race against Democrat Tom Perriello? |
What we did not know, however, was just how convincing Barack Obama’s victory would be (or even, to be completely honest, if he would manage to win Virginia at all). But the answer, as Sarah Palin would say, was a resounding “You betcha!” And not just at the top of the ticket, either —as it turned out, the skinny guy with the funny name had political coattails so long they were practically a wedding train. (O.K., we’ve now mixed our metaphors so thoroughly that it appears we inadvertently elected Dennis Rodman president.)
In fact, the huge shocker of election night ’08 was not Obama’s 5-point Old Dominion victory, or even the upset election of Norfolk Democrat Glenn Nye over U.S. Rep. Thelma Drake (who, in the sort of Odd detail we just love, won her House seat in 2004 after the Republican incumbent, Ed Schrock, was caught soliciting some hot man-on-man action through a telephone dating service and dropped out of the race).
No, the true mind-blower of this quadrennial saturnalia of suffrage was the possible unseating of our most beloved pol afnd patron saint, Rep. Virgil H. Goode, Jr. If indeed the do-gooder Dem Tom Perriello manages to hold onto his slim lead and turn that old Southern-fried, anti-Muslim walking malapropism out of office, we don’t know what we’ll do! Without Virgil around, we might actually have to start thinking about what to write, instead of just turning on C-SPAN 8 (“the Ocho!”) and copying down whatever ridiculous thing is currently spilling out of Goode’s offensive and overly garrulous gob.
Well, Mr. Goode, if you do indeed get demoted to private citizen again, we humbly suggest that you ponder your future prospects while listening to a certain Brooks and Dunn ditty: “One kid dreams of fame and fortune/One kid helps pay the rent/One could end up going to prison/One just might be president.”
Think about it: You’re already famous (thanks to “The Daily Show”), you don’t pay rent, and you’re not going to prison (as long as Mitchell Wade keeps his mouth shut), so why not go for the big kahuna? A Virgil Goode presidential campaign would be a gift to the masses (especially if they write about gaffe-prone politicians for a living), and those right-wing campaign contributions would keep you in hairspray and cufflinks for years to come.
Goode/Allen 2012! Please, God—our nation’s political humorists depend on it.
