Gracie and the Surprise Party

It is a presidential election year. Lately, it always seems like it's a presidential election year, but this year, 2020, is on the cycle to have votes cast that count. (Well, maybe) Think Summer Olympics. Think Leap years.The other years are just part of the exhibition season. There is only one presidential year, and it's every four years.

If there were no politicians running there would be no cable news. No talking heads. We should be grateful there are so many politicians, and non-politicians, seeking the highest office in the land. If there weren't, cable news would be relegated to covering Town Hall variance meetings across the country.

In 2004,Cynthia Crossen of the Wall Street Journal gave us all a glimpse of presidential campaign silliness. Or was it silly? "To Ensure Loyal Voters, Gracie Allen's Buttons Were the Sew-On Kind."

And of course, someone has just written a book about 'The Presidential Fringe, Questing and Jesting for the Oval Office,' by Mark Stein.

Mr. Stein's book was given a lively, positive review in the WSJ (Love that section. It's always in the same place in the paper.) by Dave Shiflett.

From Mr..Shiflett's book review it is easy to gather that Mr. Stein tells us of the antics of those who are "running for president" who are doing it for real and satirically. And the attention they get. We like to laugh. Laughter is the best medicine. At least Reader's Digest always said that. (Is there still a Reader's Digest?)

Like baseball, there are names before the Common Era: Leonard Jones, Joseph Smith, (the Mormon), George Edwin Taylor and Victoria Woodhull.

There are the satiric candidates, the ones I recognize in one way or another: Steve Colbert,Rosanne Barr, Will Rogers, Pat Paulsen and Gracie Allen.

There's one surely from the '60s that I don't remember, Pigasus, the candidate for the Youth International Party, Youth International Party, YIP, the Yippies, who were fond of promoting the flaunting of authority. Pigasus it turns out was an actual pig who at the end of the campaign was turned over to the Humane Society and may have wound up in a package of Oscar Mayer bacon.

I haven't yet read the book, but will. Mr. Stein and Mr. Shiflett both graciously responded to my email and Tweet giving them the link to Cynthia's piece.

Who is Gracie Allen? It's a legitimate question if you are not 'of a certain age' and weren't exposed to her daffiness that made sense on the 1950s TV show 'Burns and Allen.'

George Burns and Gracie Allen were top billing vaudevillians and radio personalities 'back in the day.' At the end of their TV show in which they played themselves living at home and being what would now be considered waaaaay overdressed for relaxation, they would come out from behind the curtain, George nattily dressed holding the ever-present cigar, and Gracie, in her sweeping, pleated puffy dress, looking like she was hosting a  cocktail party, and address the audience, you the TV viewer.

Gracie and George engaged in a delightful verbal duet, with Gracie's sentences racing ahead so fast with names of relations, that you needed instant replay to figure out what she said.  She had more relations than the Kennedys that we were yet to meet. It was a bit almost like Abbot and Costello's baseball routine. Lots of early television was inhabited by radio personalities, vaudevillians and sketch humor.

George played the befuddled straight man trying to dissect what Gracie was saying. My daughter, who is a speech pathologist, tells me there is an actual name for people who ramble on with no antecedent (cohesive) hooks: word salad. Gracie was the entire salad bar.

So, in 1940, in shows and on radio, Gracie ran for president against FDR and Wendall Willkie Ms. Crossen's piece opens with telling us of Gracie's platform: "redwood trimmed with nutty pine" and that she welcomed "foreign relations," so long as they didn't stay too long and they brought their own bedding."

She really did campaign. There was a 34-city whistle stop tour (train) from Los Angeles to Omaha, Nebraska where her newly formed Surprise Party held its first, and only convention. She of course was the nominee. (Was a young Warren Buffet in attendance?)

Mr. Stein in his reply to me told me of Gracie actually getting 61 votes in the Wisconsin primary,. while of course not being on a party's ticket. Gracie declared victory by a landslide.

Gracie of course produced a book recounting her campaign, 'How to Become President.' "Presidents are made, not born. That's a good thing to remember. It's silly to think that presidents are born, because very few people are 35 years old at birth, and those who are won't admit it."

Farmers were a much bigger constituency in 1940, and Gracie appealed to them, by feeling farms should be bigger, "so asparagus can grow lying down."

Her slogan was 'Down With Common Sense." Interestingly enough, into today's NYT there is a column by James B. Stewart sub-headed 'Common Sense' where he writes of the pardoning of Mike Milken and how it flies in the face of "rule of law."

Tonight Mike Bloomberg (Mayor Mike) joins the assembled for a Democratic Presidential debate. To the politically minded it promises to be a good show. Maybe a free-for-all. It's ratings will be bandied across the country tomorrow, and will likely approach Super Bowl debate ratings. Whatever that is.

I for one have no interest. Gracie's not going to be there. At least not physically.

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