Dead Man Running

by Pa Rock
Political Strategist

Political operatives from across the United States are beginning to sit up and take notice of a new trend in elections that is coming out of Missouri. While average candidates have average chances of winning elections (if they conduct well-financed, average campaigns), they become damned near invincible when they get lucky enough to die prior to the election!

Most people know the story of Missouri's Governor Mel Carnahan who was running a hard race to remove John Ashcroft from the U.S. Senate in 2000. Carnahan was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election. It was too late to have his name removed from the ballot, and many believed that the reptile Ashcroft would be a shoo-in for re-election. But the voters of Missouri didn't think a little thing like an untimely death should serve as a forfeit for the election. Dead Governor Carnahan kicked Ashcroft's flabby ass, and put him in the history books as the first, and so far - only, sitting United States Senator ever to lose an election to a dead man!

The Show Me state made the news again this past Tuesday when the good citizens of Winfield re-elected their mayor to a fourth term a month after his death. The deceased Mayor Harry Stonebaker didn't just beat his opponent, Alderman Bernie Panther, he clobbered him by taking ninety percent of the vote.

There are so many advantages to running for office while dead that I'm shocked it hasn't come into fashion before now. Dead candidates run clean campaigns. They don't waste time lying about their opponents - and they can't be bought by special interests. They are also be very unlikely to steal from the public treasury after they are elected. And if a dead candidate or public official gets caught up in a sex scandal, chances are excellent that the poor bastard truly was an innocent victim of circumstance.

What if the country elected a dead Congress? Taxidermists could get the members all gussied up and park them at their desks. School children and church groups could visit the Capitol twenty-four seven and stroll through the chambers watching their leaders in action - or lack thereof. True, there wouldn't a lot of productive legislation getting passed, but would that be such a change from the way things currently work?

I've been giving it some thought, and since I am from Missouri I might just decide to be buried there. That would make me a permanent resident. After that, who knows? I'm thinking that when all the people who know me have died off, I might just attempt a run for governor - 2076 ought to be as good a time as any!

Give 'Em Hell, Claire!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Claire McCaskill, the current occupant of Harry Truman's Senate seat, is quickly proving herself to be to be as gutsy as the Man from Independence - the man who threatened to drop an atomic bomb down Emperor Hirohito's stovepipe and fired General MacArthur. Right now she is kicking Wall Street's butt and taking names - and making me awfully proud of my Missouri heritage!

But let's back up a minute and get a sense of what it means to be a politician from the "Show Me" state.

McCaskill, a former homecoming queen at Hickman High School in Columbia, MO, (the alma mater of "Kenny Boy" Lay and Sam Walton), served as member of the Missouri House of Representatives before being elected to two terms as the first female prosecutor of Jackson County, MO (the Kansas City metro area). In 1998 she was elected to the office of Missouri State Auditor where she terrorized state, county, and city governments, and even school districts, with her thorough and sophisticated audits of their books. (When I was around twelve-years-old I met one of her predecessors in the auditor's office. At that time the job was more or less functionless and the auditor spent his days roaming around the captitol building handing out pens and emory boards with his name on them.) That was not the way McCaskill chose to handle her responsibilities. She was a lioness, and each dollar that belonged to the citizens of Missouri was one of her cubs.

John Ashcroft, a former two-term Republican governor of Missouri - and an evangelical Christian known for his piety and ability to speak in tongues - was running for his second term in the U.S. Senate in 2000. Ashcroft's opponent was Missouri's popular Democratic two-term governor, Mel Carnahan, who had served as lieutenant governor during the years that Ashcroft was governor. The blood between them was so bad that Ashcroft was afraid to leave the state while he was governor for fear that Carnahan would act in his place while he was gone, no matter how briefly.

The Senate campaign was tight and fierce. Unfortunately for the citizens of Missouri and the nation, Governor Carnahan was killed in a plane crash less than two weeks before the critical vote - too late for his name to be struck from the ballot. In a stunning upset that will be referenced in history books for generations to come, Missouri voters defeated Senator Ashcroft by electing their dead governor to replace him. Newly elected President Bush helped Ashcroft save face, at least temporarily, by appointing him Attorney General of the United States - and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mel Carnahan's widow, Jean, was appointed by interim governor, Roger Wilson, to fill the Senate vacancy that her dead husband won. Unfortunately for Missouri, she was defeated for the remainder of the term two years later by a former Congressman (and Bush mouthpiece) Jim Talent. Talent finished the term, but was himself defeated by Claire McCaskill in 2006.

Just over a year after making it to the Senate, McCaskill broke with many of her female colleagues in the world's most exclusive club by openly supporting Barack Obama in his primary bid against Hillary Clinton. Her instincts were good, and she is today a close confidante of the President.

Which brings us up to the present.

This afternoon Senator McCaskill caught everyone off guard, including the Washington press, her colleagues in the Senate, and apparently the Obama administration as well, when she submitted a bill that calls for executives of companies that have been bailed out (subsidized) by the government to have their salaries capped at $400,000 per year - the same salary that the nation's Chief Executive, President Obama, receives. She had deftly out-maneuvered the Republican apologists for the failings of big business, and staked out a prime piece of populist high ground.

In a beautiful piece of Missouri-speak, McCaskill roared that "These people are idiots! You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. What planet are these people on?" What planet, indeed?

McCaskill said that she had been mad for some time, watching "these guys" run their companies into the ground while holding onto their jobs and making claims for executive compensation. She said that "it just seemed unreal to me."

And the bellowing from Wall Street will be deafening. We can't cut the pay of our most talented executives. They will quit and take their skills elsewhere.

Skills? Aren't these the guys who drove the wagons over the cliff in the first place? Let them quit. Give those jobs to some state university business school graduates who would be thrilled to work for $400,000 a year. Surely they could not be as inept as the bozos that they would be replacing!

Claire, I could not be prouder of you for wading into this mess in such a decisive manner. I will send handwritten letters to your colleagues urging passage of this bill - and volunteer for any other grunt work that will help in fixing this mess. Thank you for watching out for us and our money.

Now, after you get these greedy Wall Street whores whipped into shape, maybe you could give some thought to capping the salaries of ball players who play in stadiums that were funded by taxpayers. Just a thought...