One of the things that makes running for President such a masocistic exercise is dealing with questions and statements that are, well, to be polite, exotic...
John Edwards ran into a pair of odd inquiries from a pair of University of New Hampshire students Monday night (April 2). The first was an embarrassingly bizarre and meandering monologue by a female who was clearly nervous and befuddled. She ended her personal philosophy of life prelude to the more blunt assessment of "it's all about me" and what could an Edwards presidency do to make her journey...better? easier? a Yellow Brick Road?
Edwards and wife Elizabeth came to the young woman's rescue.... Their sympathetic but nonsensical replies were as confusing, though thankfully shorter, than the rant itself. Perhaps they were as baffled as me (I bet later they looked at each other and said..."that was strange")
Here is my early season favorite moment: it came at the same event came later when an eager young male student wondered what all the fuss about global warming was about and that the candidate's climate change and energy policies were so much wasted, pardon the pun, energy. He was he said "proud" that the United States was the undisputed leader in carbon dioxide production because it showed economic prowess and, I suspect, a certain defiance about (1) the future, (2) the environment, and (3) the rest of the world. Hey, maybe this carbon excess isn't so bad -- not unlike Sen. John McCain taking a safe neighborhood stroll in Baghdad (while wearing a flak jacket and escorted by 100 soldiers, helicopters and snipers)
In the Bush era when up is down and victory in Iraq is just around the delusional corner and American prestige (and influence) erodes by the moment, perhaps it's good for the national ego to take pride in leading the pack in something.
Still, these pale compared to my all-time favorite exchange between a spectator and candidate. More than a few primaries ago in a college library lounge, I was one of four people (two reporters, two students hanging out in the midst of snow storm) who greeted a Senator, someone not exactly an unknown but who was running far behind in the polls and was displeased at his aide for bringing him to this emerging fiasco (I understood: I wasn't overjoyed by the moment either)
Before the candidate, who wondered what kind of self-immolation he was committing, could give his stump talk, another person wandered in, looked around and asked the Senator: "Are you somebody?" Not missing a beat, the humbled politican replied "Apparently not."
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