Stephen Colbert says he’s running for president of the United States of America. Scared? You should be. So you figure this is for real, and the cat is actually taking a shot at the highest office in the land.
Also, to maintain the suspension of disbelief, he would most likely have to run outside of South Carolina, barring a miraculous write-in movement.
The kids these days seem to like him, and, chances are, if he says the right things he could even grab the youth vote.
Furthermore, a recent Pew Research Center study suggests that members of the Colbert Nation are some of the best-informed television viewers around, which means the trend could spread to other TV-watching people.
Then, they’ll communicate with the book readers and we could really have an election on our hands.
Since the vast majority of us are TV watchers, however, let us assume that, like the other candidates, we get our knowledge about Colbert solely from this limited source.
He’s a family man with a steady, respectable job, shiny teeth, has no criminal record and he brought upon the "truthiness" movement. He seems to know what he’s talking about enough to act like he doesn’t, and he hasn’t screwed us yet. Suddenly, Colbert’s looking like a pretty good candidate with a decent shot.
Now, this implies that either he is the "mack daddy" as his body of work suggests or that there’s a serious problem with the candidate selection in this election, which is disappointing considering it’s following a fairly unpopular and somehow two-term presidency.
Added to that, the dollar is getting railed by the Euro and has fallen behind even Canadian trade paper, which, in a Super Bowl watching, capitalist nation, is shameful. We’re No. 1,right?
We need to jump on this growing international trend of sustainability, start worrying a little bit less about who we’ve got beef with and how to make money off of each other, and more about how to keep this America thing going.
Our military’s spread all over the place resulting in a hefty tab, confidence is down with a weakening interior and our economy’s slipping. We’re going to need someone at the helm who can handle what appear to be some pretty rough waves ahead.
And who has the best TV smile capable of reinstating faith in the American government? The honorable Stephen Colbert from South Carolina, that’s who.
And why shouldn’t he run? American political candidates have just been forced to become caricatures anyway. Yes, the American voter’s need for a candidate with a somewhat likable and, more importantly, tangible persona, combined with round the clock news networks have created an interesting type of electoral process.
In order to run for president these days, one must become the best sound-bite actor they can when, in reality, we don’t how crazy these people are.
We don’t know what angle they’re going to take in this planet’s great resource war. There’s no way to tell whether they’d get hammered for a week surrounding a talk at the Group of Eight summit or the United Nations, and deal us a bad hand.
At least Colbert can hold it together on TV for 88 minutes a week without coming off like a crazy person or snake oil salesman.
At least when I laugh while listening to him it’s not because I’m secretly scared about the possible geopolitical ramifications of what he just said. This is because, as part of his job, he puts in a lot of time into thinking about what he says, which is more than I can say about some of the candidates.
I’ve never been so conflicted about something for which I was hopeful. After the first week of seeing him on the TV box, I knew I wanted Colbert for president in ’08, but seeing the developing state of the country needed to make it a feasible reality, I’m just kinda bummed.
Perhaps if I made myself more knowledgeable about government and held politicians accountable, something could be done about all this. Hmm.
Bergman, an English junior, can be reached via [email protected]
