Stuck Inside Of Columbia With The Tallahassee Blues Again

In Which Two Candidates Let Their Guard (And Their Pants) Down

by Duke Amboy

"I regret that I have but one wife to give for my country," Huck delivered the punchline.

It was another Romney crack. I tried hard to laugh - the painkillers and Old Granddad helped a bit - for about the fortieth time. There's a horrible rate of attrition, hanging out with Mike Huckabee. He wants so desperately to be loved, like some over-eager spaniel that brings you slobber-covered slippers every morning, in the vain hope that you'll scratch him behind the ear. Huck wanted it too. It hung around him like an almost-visible aura of need...

In an effort to appeal to the "healthy-lifestyle" demographic, what I call the fitness nazis, the man lost over one hundred pounds of body weight in an alarmingly short period of time. I wanted to know how he'd managed it.

"Well, I'll tell you, Duke. I had a pretty significant length of the old plumbing removed, and then I had the remainder rerouted."

He was willing to demonstrate. We went into the posh, marble-festooned lavatory of his HQ, where he simultaneously dropped his slacks and produced a cellophane-wrapped sandwich from a jacket pocket. In two bites it was gone, decimated: the infamous Huckabee appetite. Soon after I heard a sort of wet rattle from deep inside the man, he let out a plaintive grunt, and there was the distinct plash of waste matter into the porcelain bowl.

I congratulated him: "Ingenious, sir. You've circumvented your digestive tract entirely. It goes from foodstuff to shit in a matter of seconds." I was heavily impressed. This was commitment. Imagine what the man would do with our armed forces, our Federal Reserve...dare I say, our Girl Scouts of America?

"What's your plan for Florida, sir?" It was the right moment for a sudden shift in tactic. Catch 'em with their pants down has never so literally been the proper adage...

"Well, you know, Duke, so far it's been me and McCain. Swapping body blows back and forth across this great land of ours. It's been a split decision every time. Too close, too close to call," he lamented.

"Rudy's been kicking back," he continued, "taking it easy like the pampered little nancy boy we both know he is. But he's gonna come out swinging in Florida. It's his own backyard, is how he puts it. Well, my friend, we've got a few surprises in store for that dago bastard..."

"Care to elaborate, sir?" Hope springs eternal, but I knew it was futile. "Negative ads? Muckraking journalism? Pictures of Rudy and a eight-year-old Cuban boy?" But Huck only smiled, that ghost of maliciousness past that still haunts his emaciated, hang-dog face...

It was the best I could hope for. I'd penetrated deeper into the Huckabee campaign than any other correspondent and I'd emerged relatively unscathed. One of the Hucksters had confiscated my No-Doz. Otherwise, it was something of a coup...

One of my paid informants told me where I could find McCain and his Straight Talk Express: parked behind a massage parlor called Two Wongs not far from the perimeter of Fort Jackson. McCain was inside, four wisp-thin Oriental girls working him over. He offered me two, but, in order to preserve my objectivity, I refused...

"Senator," I opened, "I have just two words for you, sir: Liberty University..."

McCain's eyes shot open and his face reddened. And it wasn't just what one of the girls was doing with John-boy. He was alarmed, abashed. He'd made a deal with the devil and he knew it...

"Falwell," he sputtered. "Well, Falwell's alright. Those kids are our future." He was acting just like the Obaminator - some politico robot programmed to spout sound bytes and bicker with other candidates over who loved Ronnie Reagan more. It sickened me, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that, with one well-placed chop to his carotid artery, I could put a stop to his going over any further to the Dark Side.

But maybe McCain needed help. His face seemed to show it. He was clearly in pain, torn between what he knew he should do, and what he had to do in order to remain "viable," as they call it...

"What can I do for you, Senator?" I was willing to help. I had no vested interest in the man or his party, but as one suffering human being pleading to another, I found it impossible to deny him. "Oxycontin? I think I still have a couple pills rattling around here somewhere." I patted myself down, found the pill bottle and handed it over to the Senator.

"Maybe later," he sighed, handing the bottle off to one of his aides.

He fixed me with his profoundly blue eyes. "But are there enough, Duke? Can it really end the pain?"

I knew what the man had in mind. And I couldn't say I blamed him...

END OF DISPATCH