I’m going to take a shot at something here. I know, I’m not the most serious guy. This column is better known for stories about my daughter or how a neighbor’s cat threw up on my car and it resembled Elvis. But I feel like with a titanic presidential election shaking our country, I can’t just sit here and waste this opportunity to share my own unique insight. So this week I want to use this space to speak directly to our candidates and offer them some much-needed advice:
• Stop promising little things, like walls across the Mexican border or minimum wage increases to $135 an hour. Americans don’t like small. We don’t want practical and realistic. We want ginormous! We want promises so big that you sit back and think a 5-year-old must be running the campaign. Like a proposal to start printing all U.S. currency on Mars. Or a promise to make the next U.S. Supreme Court nominee a character from “Game of Thrones.” Or better yet: That we will end global warming by requiring all houses and offices to open their windows during the summer so the air conditioning collectively cools the planet. You want the country to embrace you? Start thinking big!
• From polls I’ve read, these are some of the most unpopular candidates in a very long time. Their favorability ratings are so low — on both sides — that we all have to wonder, “Do their mommas even like them?” Which is a great opportunity for enterprising candidates to seize the opportunity, recognize their own weaknesses and pronounce that if elected, they won’t run the country themselves. Rather, they’ll turn it over to people we actually DO like … perhaps Pat Sajak or Kareem Abdul Jabbar or that really cute kid from “The Jungle Book.” Boy was he good at running around with computer-generated animals!
• This year’s campaign slogans — things like “Make America Great Again” and “Hillary for America” — just don’t resonate with us. How about something more positive and inspirational. Something like: “Meatballs for every man, woman and child,” “Hey, at least I’m not the other guy” or “In a field of mediocrity, don’t forget I’m pretty OK.”
• Please explain what a delegate is. Because most Americans don’t know — I thought it was something to replace the penny — and even more don’t care. But they must be important because our slate of candidates thinks talking about “delegate math” is more important than talking about actual problems.
• And don’t forget we have actual problems, bigger than neighborhood cats throwing up on our cars. Take a couple of moments to listen to them (our problems, not the cats) and then come up with actual plans to solve them. Then we might start liking one of you. Oh, and don’t forget that printing money on Mars thing!