Tomorrow, Monday, after a five-week recess, Congress will return to Washington and resume the usual routine of infighting, scheming, finger-pointing, prevaricating, back-stabbing, grandstanding and gridlock that has characterized its behavior for the last six years. But just as Louis B. Mayer once observed that it takes just as much money and work to make a terrible motion picture nobody goes to see as it does to make an Academy Award-winning blockbuster, it takes just as much money and work to provide the citizens of the United States with a farcical parody of our government’s legislative branch as it does to provide them with a genuine and effective one. And an essential element of having a Congress of any kind is having congressional staff on duty here even during recess, as well as having droves of them arrive back a week or two in advance of Congress’ return in order to prepare the way for the grand entrances of their bosses. So it was that Hezekiah Root Hickok, senior staffer for Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, visited me for a consultation on Thursday.
“Pat’s Senate race has gotten mighty weird, Tom,” Hickok opened as he pulled up the chair to the right of my desk and leaned forward in a cozy manner. “You hear about what his Democrat opponent did?”
“You mean Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor?” I asked. “He quit in the middle of the race, didn’t he?”
“Sure did,” Hickok confirmed. “And he did it because there was a three-way race between him, Pat and some guy named Greg Orman.”
“Right,” I acknowledged, “and because ‘Democrat’ is the only four-letter word in Kansas that has eight letters in it, when Taylor took a long, hard look at the polling data, he realized that all he was doing was siphoning off votes from Orman. The media says Taylor quit so Orman would have a better chance to defeat Roberts than he stands to have at winning the Powerball jackpot.”
“Yeah, and Orman says he’s an independent,” Hickok snorted, “but he’s nothing but a liberal in sheep’s clothing! Good thing for us, though, that Kris Kobach stepped in.”
“Kansas Secretary of State Kobach,” I noted, “refused to remove Taylor’s name from the ballot, because Taylor wouldn’t state that he was incapable of performing the duties of a United States Senator.”
“Well,” Hickok huffed, “you can’t just quit running for the United States Senate because you feel like it, not where I come from anyway. You got to have a darn good reason to do something like that in Kansas.”
“And the fact that Kris Kobach is a Republican,” I observed, “wouldn’t have anything at all to do with it, naturally.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” Hickok shrugged. “Pretty near every statewide public office holder in Kansas is a Republican.”
“And now?” I prodded with a slight smile.
“And now,” Hickok smiled back as he leaned closer, “I’m sitting here talking to you about what Pat ought to do next. See, this Orman guy, he’s pretty slick. He’s young and he’s charismatic and those are going to help him sell this phony ‘independent’ image he’s pushing. And Pat had a hard time winning the Republican primary.”
“A hard time?” I echoed ironically. “That’s the understatement of the month. He barely made it.”
“Yeah,” Hickok admitted as he sunk back into his chair and glanced up at the ceiling, “it was a squeaker. His Tea Party challenger said he doesn’t live in Kansas anymore, he lives in a luxury home in Alexandria, Virginia, and only rents a room from himself in a building he owns in Dodge City. And truth be told, Pat’s approval ratings need to be a lot better than they are at the moment. He’s still more popular than getting a root canal, but Kansans trust used car salesmen more than him by a margin of four percentage points. But what’s really got us worried is latest public opinion polls comparing him to Orman. According to those, there’s a possibility that Orman might actually win!”
“Oh my,” I gasped, “you certainly wouldn’t want that!”
“Absolutely not,” he concurred. “So – what are your thoughts and recommendations, Tom?”
“Your best strategy,” I told him, “would be to get Democrats to vote for Taylor.”
“But he’s not running!” Hickok protested. “How in the world could… oh, I get it… you mean…”
“Meaning,” I interrupted, “that while independents are the least gullible voters, Democrats are the most.”
“I get it,” he nodded. “Okay, then, how do we do this?”
“First of all,” I advised, “create some confusion among the Democratic ranks by running campaign advertisements attacking Orman which sound like they were created by the Taylor campaign.”
“Saying what?” Hickok inquired as he took a Surface Pro 3 out of his briefcase and began to take notes.
“That Orman is soft on gun control,” I suggested. “That Orman doesn’t understand women’s issues, that he’s against gay marriage and opposes legalized marijuana.”
“Is any of that true?” Hickok wondered.
“Since when did that matter to a Republican?” I shot back.
“Oh yeah,” he mused, “I forgot.”
“Then run campaign advertisements attacking Taylor which sound like they were created by the Orman campaign. Those should say that Taylor is too liberal for Kansas, that he wants to shut down gun shows and wouldn’t let you sell your assault rifle to your next door neighbor, even if he is an Iraq War veteran who won the Medal of Honor. Say that Taylor isn’t really a Democrat, he’s a Socialist who was seen kissing Claire McCaskill at an Obama fund raiser in 2012 and he’s in favor of constitutional amendments to legalize gay marriage, pot brownies and a twenty-five dollar an hour minimum wage.”
“All right,” Hickok assured me, “we can do this, no problem. But we’re required by law to say who paid for the advertisements, aren’t we? What are people going to think when they hear that Pat’s campaign paid for ads like that?”
“Have the announcer read the notice at the fastest legally allowed rate of speech,” I recommended. “Nobody listens to those funding disclaimers anyway. They simply assume that a negative add like that was funded by one of the candidate’s opponents – which, in fact, will be exactly the case, just not the opponent they expect.”
“What else?” Hickok said, looking up expectantly from his tablet.
“Well,” I pointed out, “most of the Democrats in Kansas are concentrated in the Second and Third congressional districts, up around Kansas City. So prior to the election, instead of having your campaign volunteers go around knocking on doors and handing out brochures about what a great fellow Pat Roberts is, in those districts you should have them handing out brochures about what a great guy Chad Taylor is.”
At that, Hickok favored me with a puzzled stare. “Where are we going to get those?”
“Find some of Taylor’s old campaign brochures,” I explained, “and check to see who printed them. Then order a boat load of them from the same company. What are they going to do – refuse your huge pile of money? Even if the original printer turns out to be that crazy, you can always just make up some of your own stuff and have another printer do it for you. Also, this being the Internet age and so forth, and young voters being particularly gullible and clueless – especially the Democrats, of course – you’re going to want your geeks to create some fake Chad Taylor for Senate sites on the Web, and open a bunch of Twitter accounts that look like they belong to the candidate and his campaign staff. Then start pumping out a regular stream of tweets about the exciting events and marvelous progress of Chad’s campaign. Finally, for all those gullible Kansas Democrats with computers and Internet enabled devices, you’ll need to create a steady stream of emails, spamming them with fake news of the Taylor campaign, inviting them to fake neighborhood organizing sessions lead by Pat’s operatives, and encouraging them to participate in grass-roots efforts to get votes for Chad Taylor.”
“But… but,” he stammered, “when folks find out the Web sites are fake, that the Twitter accounts are impostors, that the emails are nothing but fraud, won’t that make them angry at Pat?”
“This is the Internet we’re talking about,” I reminded him. “Pull off a big enough hoax on the Internet and you’ll be considered a genius and a hero. Look at the ‘Blair Witch Project,’ ‘the Montauk Monster,’ ‘Bigfoot’s Body,’ ‘Lonely Girl 15,’ ‘Steorn Free Energy,’ ‘Hercules the Dog,’ ‘The Giant Camel Spiders of Iraq,’ ‘The Derbyshire Fairy,’ and, of course, ‘Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend.’ As a matter of fact, getting lit up as a cyber hoax artist might give Pat Roberts a reputation as the world’s first seventy-eight year old Internet hipster. Think he’d be up for growing a handlebar mustache and a goatee?”
“I’d have to check with him on that,” Hickok averred. “Anything else?”
“Make sure your people hit the retirement and nursing homes on election day and get those senile old Democrat geezers out to vote for Chad Taylor,” I concluded, “and that should about do it.”
“All right then,” he said as he slipped his tablet back in his briefcase. “I’ll run these past Pat’s campaign manager right after lunch. They seem kind of… underhanded and… extreme, though.”
“Spoken like a true Kansan,” I told him as he rose to shake my hand. “Believe me, though, there’s no way a Republican from Florida or Texas would bat an eye about doing this stuff.”
“Well,” Hickok commented, “I guess you’re right. We can’t let this chance for the Republicans to control both houses of Congress during the last two years of the Obama administration get away just because of some silly scruples. After all, sometimes there are situations where the ends justify the means.”
“Even,” I opined, “in Kansas.”