The Wake

Once again, the election cycle is starting to turn on, its rusty gears sputtering and whirring to life even earlier than usual, as more and more candidates for political office are declaring their intention to run, dropping out of the race or simply saying nothing. Since the political machine is already underway, the issues politicians must address have taken shape, the big questions on a state and national level are already being asked and dodged with aplomb by both media and politician. Thankfully, the American public will begin to weed out the fringe politicians who either preach a bizarre, negative platform or those politicians who simply aren’t aware of what issues aren’t affecting the population.

That doesn’t stop some…interesting people from running, considering running or even pretending to run for political office. Here at the Wake, we received an interesting letter from a contributor who simply calls himself Smudge. According to Smudge, he wants to run for governor this November on “a tall and grassy platform.” The rest of the piece is similar in tone and weird campaign promises. However, Smudge’s pitch to the people can be used as an example of what issues are affecting the governor’s office, as well as a primer on how not to sell your image to a crowd of voters. The following is an analysis of Smudge’s open letter, as well as an explanation of what issues potential gubernatorial candidates will have to contend with come November.

S:My name is Smudge, and I want to be your governor. I want to play the game and roll the dice and throw my cards on the table and my hat in the ring. I want to lead you into a sparkling future, bereft of care and worry. I want to heal your ailments and fund your businesses and make it so you don’t have to struggle to survive anymore. I want to make life easy for you. With you, I want to share my dream. Remember, my name is Smudge and this is a chariot and this will set you free.

TM: Smudge’s opening paragraph is well written, filled with good rhetorical devices such as his promise to make it so the public doesn’t have to “struggle to survive.” His brief mentions of health care and the job economy, the issues that are widely seen as the most concerning to American citizens currently, sets a good tone for campaign promises he might make later. Unfortunately, Smudge makes a few awkward statements, especially the metaphor he uses about his campaign which will set people free.

S: My platform is a simple platform; my stance is an open stance. I will strike out at everything you despise. I will attack your ghosts and skeletons. My left hand is nicknamed Mr. Clean and my right hand is nicknamed Sir Gerhard Von Kreig, Champion of Sound! I will clap these hands together and I will bring down the rain. I will grow the corn the cattle eat. I will grow the cattle the cattle eat. I will grow the people the cattle eat, because the cattle do eat the people, technically, in a very roundabout way of things. I will feed the people! To cattle, I will feed the people!

TM: This paragraph is the beginning of Smudge’s downfall as a viable political candidate. Modern science doesn’t support Smudge’s claims that he can summon rain by clapping his hands together. His claims to feed people to livestock would also turn off most, if not all, potential voters.

S: My platform is a hopeful platform; my tongue is a necktie knot. I want you to have a favorite television show. I want you to be able to watch your favorite television show at the same time each week! I want to share with you messages from my associates while you watch your show. They have many things they wish for you to have; my associates feel as though they can make your life better. They can make your life better, you just have to allow my associates to do their work as you do your work, unhindered and unfettered and free of bother and concern. I want you to have emotional connections to the people you watch on your television screens. I want you to cry when they cry and laugh when they laugh. My associates and I feel that you would be much happier involved in the lives of the characters on the television screen than trying to repair your own life and your failing relationship and your lack of work and your own lack of worth and just sit right down and watch your television screen.

My platform is a tall and grassy platform. I will paint my tongue and teeth and toenails green for you! I will make responsible decisions regarding our future. I will make sure we keep regarding our future. I will always put the future first! I will invest in new breeds of corn and flowers that grow big red blossoms out of the bodies that we put in the cornfields to rot. I will reuse every plastic bag. I will ban the production, import, and distribution of plastic bags! I will revolutionize the shipping industry with the first cargo ship that burns no fuel! We will row it, Minnesota! We will row that great, grey ocean liner! There will be hundreds of us working together in the belly of a rusty whale. We will all row that boat together, because that boat is being rowed for all of us. And we will name it after Marilyn Monroe! We will resurrect the corpse of Duluth and make a modern ghost. We will be the bones and we will be the muscles and we will row the boat together! We must ignite Duluth, we must set it ablaze!

TM: Smudge’s attempts to destroy Duluth wouldn’t help the state’s economy, contrary to his earlier campaign promises. However, his attempts to highlight alternative fuel research reflects state incentives and initiatives such as the grants provided by the University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and Environment that research biofuel and bioenergy projects among other things. One of the more interesting projects funded by the U of M is an attempt by University researchers to take large amounts of algae, which can be farmed for their lipids, or natural fats and oils among other molecules, which can then be converted to biodiesel. This project received $290,000 for a three-year project which is scheduled to end by July of this year.

S: I will build trains for you. I will connect each important city with a train. Smaller communities will be given pamphlets on how to cope with the fact that they are not important to Minnesota. We will connect the train to Rochester, and here we will cure your ailments! Oh, Minnesota I want to make you healthy! We will run tests on you. Sometimes we will run fifty tests. Sometimes we will run one hundred tests. But we will always medicate you. Under my leadership, all medical procedures are free. We will inject you for free. We will give you Dialysis for free. We will operate to amend any malformations in your internal and external organs for free. I will kill your children and your children will become corn and flowers and the cattle will eat the corn and we will eat the corn and the cattle and the cattle will eat us and it will all be a wonderful circle of life and I promise you that! But you will be cured! You will be in perfect health. With our help, you will be perfect. The medicine will make you perfect. Perfect. We will make your body the way you wish it were made. I want you to look exactly how you want to look. I want you to be a five foot seven inch Mediterranean woman who fits against every other body like a sheer piece of fabric. I want you to be a Russian man who has eyes that do all the talking for him. I want you to look perfect. I want you to look perfect for free, because everybody deserves to get what they want.

TM: While Smudge’s rants about health care all but ensure his campaign would be dead in the water, other health care plans are currently in the works in the state legislative chambers. The expiring General Assistance Medical Care program and MinnesotaCare program are part of the focal point in the latest political struggle between Governor Tim Pawlenty and a largely DFL-controlled state legislative branch. As of last week, Gov. Pawlenty vetoed a plan which would have maintained the GAMC plan, which covers adults who make less than $8,000 and families that make less than $10,000 annually. Pawlenty had already vetoed funding for the GAMC plan last year, leading to the stripped-down version that both the state House of Representatives and the Senate passed legislation on in February.
Because the GAMC is set to expire on April 1, more than 32,000 people are going to be switched to Minnesota Care this week, a plan which has higher income limits for its participants, as well as access to services like hospice care, pregnancy-related care, physical and occupational and speech therapy. However, Minnesota Care won’t allow participants to have health care provided by employers who pay for at least half of their insurance premium. In other words, it may be more expensive for the low-income families who are currently covered under the expiring GAMC plan. Minnesota Care is only available for permanent residents of the state as well, so homeless people who have GAMC will most likely not have access to hospital care through the Minnesota Care plan.

On top of this, Smudge clearly doesn’t seem to pay attention to state demographics : 729,000 people of color lived in Minnesota as of 2005, according to the State Demographic Center. That population is projected to have increased to 891,000 or almost 20 percent of the population. By claiming that Smudge wants people to be Mediterranean or Russian, he is ignoring much of the civil rights legislation passed over the past 50 years as well as the current demographic trends, which project the state’s population of people of color will grow to more than 1.7 million people by 2035. Of course, actual state demographic data will be put together during this year’s census, and the projected growth of the state’s population will certainly change because of this.

S: I never want to see you working. I always want to see you at work. Everything should be effortless, but you must always be working. You may watch your television shows and enjoy your leisure time, but you must always be working at having a good time. I like leading people who have a strong commitment and a strong work ethic and that means that you should always be working. I want to lead you. I want you to be working all the time. Remember that you should never be doing anything for yourself and you should always do things for other people. This is a simple rule and will be observed as law. If you follow this simple rule, you will never have to struggle with anything else. I will pay for everything. If you give your life to me as constant work, I will give you all the money you need to live. You will never be charged rent because I will pay your rent. You will never go hungry, because I will send you groceries made by several of my associates. I will allow you to do your work from your home. I will deliver all goods and services directly to your door. You will never have to leave your house again. You will never leave your house. You will never have to leave.

TM: Here, Smudge’s ideas on job recovery would in all probability fail if they were ever implemented. However, Smudge can rest easy knowing that the state department of Employment and Economic development is projecting a decrease in job losses and a stabilized job market by the end of 2010, citing an up-and-down job market and a slow recovery as reasons why monthly job losses will decrease in size and job gains will be more and more prevalent. Although the job market won’t rapidly recover in the near future, it’s made enough of an impact to decrease the amount of home foreclosures in Minnesota by 12 percent last year.

S: Now do you see what I want for you? I tried to make myself quite clear. I want you to be happy. I want what is best for you. I want you to live and be happy about your life. I want to put the future first. I want you to give your lives to me. I want to hold them in my hand I use to hold my pens and cigarettes. My name is Smudge and I am a chariot and I will set you free.

TM: Yes, this letter was actually sent to us. No, we didn’t make this person or this letter up. Although it is unlikely that Smudge will make a serious attempt at running for governor(heck, we don’t even know his real name or whether he’ll refine his campaign promises to propose solutions that would be economically and democratically feasible) Smudge’s light-hearted attempts at making the Wakies laugh serve to remind us that running for political office means studying up on the issues. While the election is still early, and there are most definitely hot-button policies that will crop up later in the summer and into the fall, at least Smudge could identify some of the bigger concerns the state has and make proposals based on them. Hopefully, we won’t have to find out whether he could debate in a clear and sane matter with other gubernatorial candidates.