Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Campaign Slut - the TV Show

So, here I sit thinking there must be a more lucrative way to make a living than trying to wrangle candidates.  Like make a TV show about the wrangling of candidates.  It wold be bright, funny, edgy, racy, smart, scandal driven and moral.

That is each story would have a moral - an outcome good or bad that points the way for how to do the job right. Or not screw it up too badly.

So for instance, one episode would have our intrepid campaign team, headed by you-know-who, trying to figure out how to get their candidate out of the proverbial pickle caused by a not-so-youthful indiscretion and another having them pulling their hair when the candidate makes the forty-seventh edit to the mail piece they have waiting to go tot he printer, thereby sabotaging his own campaign.

From real life, we have the example of the sleazy, unattributed hit piece sent out two days before the election; the pulling of funds from a very competent candidate in favor of one with more star appeal and money of her own; the candidate who can't say no - to his wife, his brother in law, his aunt Maude, the mailman, or anyone else with a suggestion for how the campaign can be better run. Not.

Not to mention the lean times, the interpersonal squabblings, the scramblings to catch a hot property first, the typos that change everything, the cramming to learn all the latest social media tricks, the drinking, broken marriages and lost friendships.

And yet there are rewards. The night one week before the election when you know by the number of elderly Republican gents supporting your pro-environment candidate that he is going to win; the late absentee results that come in two weeks after election days showing your candidate, who was trailing the frontrunner by 123 votes on election night and went home to drown her sorrows, actually won by 37 votes when the last chad was hung.

The guts, the glory, the glamor, the gag reflexes. We have it all. Stay tuned.