Electoral Dealbreakers

I was in my hotel in Washington, DC, last week, half-watching the news. It was one election commercial after another, with the Obama and Romney campaigns sniping endlessly. Given that there are still almost three months of this level of hell to endure, I thought: We need to shut this shit down.

We need one of the candidates to make a gaffe so huge that the campaigning can end immediately and we can all retain our sanity. There would still be an election in November and the results would be technically up for grabs but one candidate would screw up so badly that both sides would figure the results are in the bag and would stop airing commercials. I started thinking of what kind of dealbreakers would tip the election either way. For fun, let’s think of some hypothetical scenarios for this election and recent elections. (No, I’m saying any of these candidates would actually do these things.)

At a campaign rally at a Catholic high school in Ohio, President Obama snorts a line of cocaine off a hooker’s tits.

During the Republican convention, Mitt Romney introduces his “most important platform” and shows a 17-minute video of child porn.

Hillary Clinton calls Obama the N-word during a debate. This wouldn’t be just a murmur one could plausibly deny. She’d scream, “You’re dead wrong, you fucking N-word!”

Cindy McCain shows up at a campaign speech with a black eye and her arm in a sling.

President Bush falls off the wagon and goes to a debate blind drunk. He waves around the nuclear football and challenges Iran to a duel.

When pressed by an interviewer, John Kerry literally cannot find America on a map. He points vaguely to Scandinavia.

Dick Cheney interrupts all TV broadcasts, appearing live from an undisclosed location, a white cat in his lap. He announces that he has invented a device that lets him control the weather.

At the National Archives, Sarah Palin rips up an original copy of the Constitution and shrieks, “Fight the real enemy.”

Rick Santorum gets caught in an all-male orgy at Fox News headquarters.

Under Al Gore’s tax plan, everyone who owes can just make the check out to “Al Gore.”

Joe Biden shows up naked to a debate and recites the script of Equus.

John Edwards cheats on his cancer-stricken wife and fathers a love child.

Oh, wait …