Sniffing out a Better Presidential Candidate
What were the founders of this country thinking, for God's sakes? It's as if they were sooooo obsessed with separation of powers, freedom of religion, and the distinction between republics, monarchies, and democracies that they forgot all the
important issues. The requirements of the president, for instance are a laugh. He has to be born in this nation. And he has to be thirty five or older. Like that matters.
The real important stuff they left out. Like how tall he is. Whether he's the sort of guy you'd get blind drunk with. Whether he's a sharp dresser, and whether he has naturally good hair like Republicans or whether he has to pay a lot to get good hair like Edwards and (Bill) Clinton. Laugh if you want, but remember that Carter was sartorially challenged. And look what a mess he turned out to be!!!!!! Standards are standards; I think we can all agree on that.
So it's reassuring to know that at long last we are using the most important and primal sense at our disposal to evaluate presidential candidates: smell. God forbid that we should elect a stinker. Think of the consequences. Is there anything worse one can say about a president than that he smells bad? Of course not.
Fortunately the media are looking out for our best interest. Alina Cho of American Morning tells us reliably that Romney "smells great." This, on the heels (metaphorically speaking of course ) of Chris Matthew's olfactory endorsement of Fred Thompson.
Leather, black powder, saddle soap, and sun-bleached clothing. Those are the scents of a true leader. Girly men, by contrast, smell of musty books, mouldering stone institutions, and overheated circuit boards. If we are to achieve greatness as a nation, we need to be led by those who smell of it.
Gratefully, gone are the bad-old days when we were unable to understand either the character or the politics of a candidate for lack of information. Now, just a whiff is all it takes to know everything. And thanks to mass media, we don't even have to do it ourselves. Experts can do it for us.
This is such an important element to presidential success that I would propose it become a formal part of each nominating convention. Make a committee of one representative from each state and have them smell the candidates carefully, paying attention to breath, ears, hands, and feet, and especially the locations where limbs connect to the body. The olfactory committees then certify that a candidate is electable on the basis of smell. If a candidate fails in this process ... well, there are always plenty of good smellers about. Especially at Republican conventions.
It makes one wonder about the Democrats, though. What do they smell like, I wonder? How come we haven't heard about a good-smelling Democrat candidate? I suspect they smell bad. Or maybe they don't smell at all. Maybe they are really just carboard cutouts. Or clever television animations. Tell you one thing, until I know what a candidate smell's good I'm not voting for them.
Our system of freedoms is too important to trust to just what a candidate says, how he votes, how he gestures, and who endorses him. You can't trust a candidate to a job as important as the presidency if he doesn't smell great. I think at last we are coming to our senses.