I received the news while I was enjoying my morning bowl of oatmeal, raisins, and walnuts with a dab of peanut butter. That’s usually my morning quiet time when I get a few minutes to myself and meditate on the coming day.
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I was interrupted by the buzzing of my cell phone, usually set to silence during these quiet moments. I had mistakenly set it to vibrate.
I could have just ignored it, but instead, I did what we all do when our peace is interrupted by this rectangular piece of metal and plastic we take with us everywhere – I looked at who was calling.
It was a number and name I knew, someone who I hadn’t heard from in a while. I could have ignored it, gone back to my feast, and checked later to see if a voice message was left; instead, curiosity got the better of me, and I answered.
“Did you hear the news?” my friend excitedly said.
“What news?” I answered, now dreading my decision to answer.
“Sununu, he’s out,” laughed my friend. “He’s not running again. His reign is over and it looks like the perfect opportunity for you for another run. Are you in?”
The news did come as a bit of a shock to me. I had been thinking long and hard about whether or not I would run again for governor as the Flatlander Party candidate. I had already run, with limited success, every two years since 2000. I was thinking it was possibly a good time to call it quits. When I first ran, I was only forty-five with still many delusional years of grandeur ahead of me. Being elected governor was just one of the many aspirations on my grandeur list.
But now, at sixty-seven, those delusions have lightened a bit, and now I’m excited if I can stay awake past 9 pm.
Still, running for the big chair (I hear it is very comfortable) is something I have dedicated a lot of time and energy to, and it would seem foolish not to give it one last try now that the race will be wide open for the first time in years.
These thoughts ran through my head as I held my phone in one hand and a spoon circling the half-eaten bowl of oatmeal in the other. I realized that this could be my last great opportunity.
“Yes, I’m in,” I said.
And that was that.
I was running, possibly for the final time.
So now it was time to start to work on a new campaign strategy.
I turned on the local news and saw that many of the obvious folks whose entire existence hinges lately on always running for some office or another had already declared their candidacy, the same old same-olds surely salivating as soon as they had heard of Sununu’s plans to step aside. They had political resumes already, and that gave them some name recognition on the political front.
Realizing that this would most likely be my swan song of politics, I knew I’d have to go all out and try something entirely new. So, I am going to use my twenty-plus years of unsuccessful campaigns to my advantage.
It’s time to make people realize that all of these folks they have been electing to different offices over the years and who now want to be governor have basically….well…accomplished little or nothing in that time.
So maybe it’s time to go with a loser.
It made me think of one of Donald Trump’s more memorable lines (and there were many) in his successful 2016 campaign for president: “What have you got to lose?”
I think that pretty much sums up the average voter’s feelings nowadays. I mean, how much worse can things get? We keep throwing the same people at the same problems and expect different results.
So, why not try what you keep rejecting? Mainly me.
Any good campaign knows the first thing you need is a catchy slogan, Maybe “Smith – Why Not?” or maybe recycling an old favorite from pizza boxes: “You’ve Tried All The Rest, Now Try The Best.” Or possibly even one of those oversized political mailers that will have the faces of all the other candidates with big letters proclaiming: “Vote Smith – Can He Be Any Worse?”
I will also campaign on the fact that this is it for me. Win or lose, I am not going to aspire to any other political office. After all, if I happen to get re-elected for two terms, by the time the second one is done, I’ll be about seventy-three and tuckered out, so why in the world would I want to be pursuing even bigger things like being a U. S. Congressman or Senator and having to travel back and forth to Washington all the time. At this stage of my life, I barely want to travel from Laconia to Concord.
So, it looks like this will be my last campaign, and I will be pulling out all the stops.
You can keep picking the same old, same olds and then pick some other same old same olds in another two years because you aren’t happy with the original same olds, or you can vote for me.
I’ll be one and done, and then I promise to go away quietly.
Now let me get back to my oatmeal.
Brendan Smith is the editor of The Weirs Times weekly newspaper where he also writes the column “A F.O.O.L* (Flatlander’s Observations On Life) In New Hampshire.” Brendan started The Flatlander Party in New Hampshire in 2000. He is the author of “The Flatlander Chronicles,” “Best Of A F.O.O.L. In New Hampshire,” and “I Only Did It For The Socks and Other Tales of Aging,” available at BrendanTSmith.com. He is hoping to cash in someday with his memoirs reflecting on his time as governor of New Hampshire if he should ever finally win.
