The other day, while walking through the student center, I came across this poster:

This is apparently a campaign to raise awareness and get out the youth vote. Generally speaking, I think this is a terrible idea - too many young people vote as is, and they have no business doing so (if MTV News is the extent of your election coverage, please stay the hell away from anything even resembling a voting booth).

But wait a minute… it’s not really a bad idea. Electing a bag of leaves, that is. It’s running for Senate. As a new resident of Tennessee, I have listened to Harold Ford and Bob Corker spew forth apothegm after apothegm, and can say without reservation that at this point, I would be willing to vote for whichever candidate first agrees to never speak again. This makes a bag of leaves look like a gift. Why? Well, think about it:

• A bag of leaves wouldn’t talk to the press, issue press releases, hold press conferences, or leak anything to the press.
• No Sunday morning TV shows, either (although it could probably give George Stephanopoulos a run for his money in the personality department).
• It won’t try to “bring more money to Tennessee” (vote buying, it seems, is no longer considered crass and inappropriate).
• It won’t cave in to special interests.
• Shoot… it doesn’t even know where K Street is.
• It won’t attempt to convince me that it has my best interests in mind.
• Pork-barrel spending? What’s that? It’s a bag of leaves for crying out loud.
• No pet projects. No bridges to nowhere. No constitutional prohibitions against burning flags. No position on gay marriage. No interest in juiced Major League Baseball players.

Most importantly, however, it won’t vote for anything! It won’t attempt to introduce legislation and make any more damn laws. It would do exactly what I want my U.S. Senator doing most of the time (at least given the alternatives): NOTHING. It would stay the hell out of my life. I’ll bet it would even be willing to take a pay cut.

I like this idea. In fact, I might even be willing to volunteer in its campaign. It would probably be the most excited I’ve been about a candidate in… well… ever.

Don’t laugh. I’m really not joking. I’d take a bag of leaves - or any inanimate object, for that matter - over Ford or Corker without even having to think about it. I’d take a potted plant. A bowling ball. That garden gnome from the Travelocity ads. Newt Gingrich. A flaming bag of dog crap (thus making Congress literally smell like the product it foists on the American public every session).

Wait, though. It gets better. There are other campaigns. For example:

I like it. Send it to Missouri as a write-in candidate against Talent and McCaskill - it can only improve the quality of dialog from either of them.

I don’t know why this reminds me of Robert Byrd, but it does.

How this differs from any of the 535 congressional representatives currently in office is beyond me.

California’s 8th District has already elected one. Eight times. If she becomes Speaker of the House, buy pooper scoopers in bulk - you’ll need them.

UPDATE: 10/25/2006, 11:50pm

My father has e-mailed me with an explanation of the title of this post, for those of you who weren’t raised by a political consultant. It’s an interesting story.

It was 1991. In Louisiana, the Governors race was attracting nationwide attention. The Pelican state has a rather odd election system for its chief executive. First of all, the election is held in an odd-numbered year (neighboring Mississippi does the same thing; it tends to diminish the participation of potentially uppity voters). Secondly, all candidates, regardless of party, run on one ballot and voters select their favorite. If no candidate receives a majority, the top two compete in a runoff.

1991’s runoff pitted former governor Edwin Edwards; a popular politician whose career was dogged by charges of corruption, and David Duke, founder of a “kinder and gentler” Ku Klux Klan. Voters complained that their choice boiled down to one between a crook and racist.

Thus was born the famous bumper sticker, “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important!” The Edwards campaign denied authorship and, when the device won a 1991 Pollie Award (the Oscar of political consulting), it went unclaimed. Edwards won handily, but Duke carried 55% of the white vote (proving that the peckerwoods will always be with us).

Two side notes: In 1998, the last year of his term, Edwards was indicted by the Feds for racketeering along with the LA Rams owner and department store magnate whose name I can’t remember (but it was sort-of Italian) in connection with the limited legalization of gambling in Louisiana. Edwards was convicted and is currently at Club Fed.

The 25 political consultants working for RJR that year [the author was a contract political consultant for RJR/Nabisco – yes, the tobacco company – in the early 1990s – Ed.] each contributed $5.00 to a pool predicting the election’s outcome. I was the last person to enter the pool. Not surprisingly, most of the D’s predicted that Duke would win (desiring proof of Republican racism) and most R’s bet on Edwards for the opposite reason. I asked our in-house bookie for the highest margin of victory for Edwards currently on his books and placed my bet one point higher.

I took home $125.00