CHARLIE MYERS IS A TYPICAL 9-YEAR-OLD bundle of energy and enthusiasm. He loves XBox 360 and playing basketball at recess. On weekends, he goes exploring in the woods behind his house, sometimes capturing toads and other small critters. He’s a good student who tries his hardest to please his parents and teachers. And he wants to run for president when he grows up. Charlie doesn’t necessarily want to be president, he’d prefer to emulate his heroes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and just run (and run and run) for President in an unending series of primaries and caucuses that provide no definitive results or satisfying conclusion.
The 2008 presidential election is the first political contest Charlie is old enough to understand, and if there’s one thing he grasps about the Democratic nominating contest, it’s that you travel around the country saying different things to different people depending on what they want. And the process never ends. Ever. He likes that. “When I grow up, I want to go to Iowa and talk about biofuel subsidies. In California, I’ll go to East Los Angeles and eat a couple of tacos. Then it’s off to Ohio to rip the living sheetrock out of NAFTA, whatever that is. The point is, I don’t need to actually get to the White House to be happy. Traversing the country and pontificating on an escalating number of local issues would suit me fine,” said the well-spoken child. As far as he knows, there is no such thing as a president. There are just two co-equal, telegenic civil servants with identical ideas and ideologies who careen across the U.S. of A like Hunter S. Thompson on a speed bender.
Vicki Myers, Charlie’s Mom and his number one “mommyist,” rubbed her boy’s sandy-blond hair and spoke about his dream to be a permanent candidate for the presidency of the United States. “Any mother would love for her child to run for president. I’d be lying if I said I can’t imagine him barnstorming across Pennsylvania with a van full of political operatives. I can see them all hunched over a detailed demographic map of a certain congressional district and brainstorming ways to spread out their integrated media spend to reach men over the age of 45 who belong to a union and don’t have health-care to cover a badly needed stomach stapling procedure. And if a certain state voted for Charlie, but had their delegates decertified by the DNC because they didn’t follow the election rules as dictated by the party elders, I can see Charlie crafting a brilliantly nuanced strategy that would win in the courtroom and play on Main Street. A sly, ceaselessly tactical and maneuvering brand of politics, that’s my dream for this child.”
While there’s quite a while until Charlie is old enough to run an unending, painfully long presidential campaign, there is an outside chance that this year’s contenders will still be at it 26 years from now when he’s reached the federal age requirement of 35 years old. “You never know,” said an unnamed political operative. “They might just keep running the primaries over and over again. It’s not about the competition or public service any longer. You have to think it’s about the free coffee and donuts in VFW halls at this point.”
For his part, Charlie says he’s comfortable waiting. “That’s why I love the Democratic party. They’re never definitive and they’re especially weak-kneed under pressure. It means that I won’t feel the heat quite so much if I run my own unending presidential campaign some day. The precedent will have been set that this takes a long, long, long, long time.”
For now, Charlie is soaking it all in and feverishly reading up on anything he can about the 2008 race. “I’ve always been fascinated by Puerto Rico,” interjected Charlie. “Did you know they have 60 available delegates even though they aren’t represented in the U.S. Senate? When I grow up, I hope my election is so tangled and undecided that my strategists have to concoct a scheme to pretend to care about some godforsaken island that most Americans don’t even know exists.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 13, 2008. Read the original PDF.