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thedrifter
07-21-03, 08:18 AM
Article ran : 07/19/2003
Politics went sour after 'dad' lost to Truman
By OTIS GARDNER

The season's almost here. I'm sure it'll be loud and violent. Winds will blow from all directions as always. There won't be a minute's peace.

I'm not talking about hurricanes. I'm talking about elections, and the season's fast approaching. I used to enjoy the political process a lot more than I do today. I suppose age accounts for some of my detachment, cynicism the rest.

The first presidential candidates of whom I had any awareness were in the 1948 election. At 7 years old, I had no idea what was going on. What I did understand was that my father looked like one of the guys.

Dad bore an uncanny resemblance to Thomas Dewey. I knew this was true because people came up to him everywhere we went if he had on civilian clothes. He was a minor celebrity or sorts in our Costa Mesa neighborhood.

I suppose had I been smart enough back then, I might've conjured up a tale about a presidential double recruited to stand in for an ailing chief executive. Naturally, Dad as the stand-in would be a terrific leader, confounding his enemies and doing great things for the people.

He'd rule with down-home wisdom, encapsulate complicated challenges into simple Gardner homilies. "Fellow Americans, remember, never sweat petty things, and avoid petting sweaty things."

The movie "Dave" sets forth that story line, without the Beverly Hillbilly-isms. Because I knew it was possible, I didn't find that film out of the realm of possibility. Of course, in our case it wouldn't have worked.

The shared resemblance of Dewey-Gardner was definitely only skin and mustache deep. Dad was a die-hard Democrat and had done some bootlegging in his youth, a very un-Dewey-like activity.

But with those experiences and memories, I could've written something like it without much stretching of imagination, except for a different ending. In that movie, the faux-president ends up with the president's wife.

Had I penned the story, we wouldn't have any of that romantic stuff. Dad had Mom. And, come to think of it, she looked a whole lot like Loretta Young - and knew how to shoot.

With the passing of this body-double accident, presidents came and went without much notice from me. I had more important things to do involving bikes, girls, marbles, girls, hunting and fishing - and girls.

However during these formative years, I was fighting the "The Great Hormonal War" yet wasn't completely unaware of what was going on in the world. For instance, I liked Ike. He was a military man like everybody around me and he smiled a lot.

Not much to go on, but enough for a kid. I couldn't help but catch a little of his election hoopla on our 7-inch television screen. I didn't understand any issues but knew something about waving and there was a lot of that.

John Kennedy was the first candidate with whom my brain connected. I saw the now-famous Kennedy-Nixon debate as it happened. Historians are very right when they say television cameras were unkind to Nixon.

Media savvy wasn't widespread yet as an art form. Nixon didn't wear makeup, nor did he make good color choices in his suit and tie. His image was almost without contrast and definition, excepting a pronounced facial shadow that looked many hours past 5 o'clock.

My political energies and dedications were short-lived, a flash in the pan. After JFK took office, he visited Chapel Hill. While "my" president gave a speech in Kenan Stadium, I stayed in the pool hall on Franklin Street, glancing at the TV between shots to see how it was going.

Although a fellow Texan, I didn't care much for Lyndon Johnson. It might've been his speaking style. John Kennedy was a hard act to follow. I thought Nixon was one of our better leaders until he stumbled over his own paranoia.

Clinton also had a balance problem. He tripped on the executive branch, falling from the graces of most Americans. It seems particularly funny to me that yesterday I saw in the news that he's published a cookbook, of all things. I wonder if it contains any recipes that'll get rid of the bad taste he left in my mouth?

Oh well, I think I'll move past that stuff and rekindle my interest in the process. I need to open up my mind. I need to let bygones be bygones. I need to spit.


Otis Gardner's column appears each Saturday. He can be reached at ogardner@ncfreedom.net.


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Sempers,

Roger
:marine: