Bright and early Friday morning – and, thanks to the start of Daylight Savings Time last Sunday, an hour earlier than it really was – at seven a.m. EDT, I welcomed Daisy May Glampers, native of Biloxi, Mississippi and lately also of the Haley Barbour not-quite-running-for-President-yet organization, to my office. She chose the chair directly in front of my desk and politely refused my offer of a latte, a cappuccino, a cafe breve and, finally, of a plain espresso.
“That’s the kind of stuff,” she explained, “that Godless, baby-killing, homo-loving, elitist Yankee liberal Socialists who listen to NPR drink. How about some good old American coffee?”
“Well,” I averred, “my private secretary makes a herself a mighty fine pot of… ah… fair trade arabica bean coffee every morning, but today, unfortunately, she doesn’t come in until eight. Some tea, perhaps? She has quite a collection, which, as I remember, happens to include a box of very… conventional Lipton black.”
“I suppose that would be… okay,” she allowed. “I prefer Luzianne, but there’s nothing… wrong… with Lipton, I don’t guess.”
A moment later I returned from pilfering Gretchen’s desk out in the reception area and began fixing Daisy May some tea. “And how,” I inquired as I pointedly began boiling two cups of tap water (instead of Evian), “may I be of assistance to Governor Barbour?”
“I think you should know,” she informed me, “that I have appointments booked solid all day today and tomorrow, all over Washington. I’m consulting every consultant who knows how to consult about stuff – the best ones, anyway, and you’re the first one on the list.”
“I’m very complimented,” I assured her, “that you chose to consult me before anyone else.”
“No,” she shook her head, “don’t you go getting a swelled head, now. It just so happens, you’re the only one of them who would agree to a meeting at seven o’clock in the morning, that’s all. So – the very first thing on my list is the Governor’s Google problem.”
“Oh,” I nodded, “that. If you type ‘Haley Barbour’ into Google with the automatic search term phrase completion feature turned on, you get…”
“Right,” she interrupted. “You get some not very nice things about Governor Barbour. So my first question is, how do we fix that?”
“Those search terms,” I explained, “are there because Google has found them to be the ones that are used most frequently in searches for information about Governor Barbour. There’s ‘Haley Barbour governor,’ ‘Haley Barbour president,’ and ‘Haley Barbour pac,’ for instance. All perfectly understandable…”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “but how,” she hissed, “does that stuff about… you know… the Citizens’ Council… and watermelons… and the Klan… and… darkies get in there?”
“Because,” I continued, “when people hear or read stories about how Governor Barbour remarked that the Mississippi White Citizens’ Councils, whom the FBI found responsible for numerous murders during the Civil Rights era, were a positive phenomenon; that he joked with one of his aides,‘… if you don’t stop calling them “coons,” some witch doctor’s going to put a hex on you and you’ll get reincarnated as a watermelon at an AME church picnic;’ that he wasn’t particularly opposed to a Mississippi state license plate commemorating the Confederate general who founded the Ku Klux Klan; or, that, overall, he’s pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool Jim Crow racist, they can’t believe anyone who behaves like that actually thinks he can be elected President of the United States in the twenty-first century. So the very next thing they do is Google his name in conjunction with a search term that will return some Web pages where they can find out more about these stories and see for themselves that, yes, Haley Barbour did, in fact, say and do all those things and yes, he is, in fact, nevertheless starting to begin to commence to initiate considering maybe running for President. Ah – there goes the tea kettle.”
Daisy May pulled a mighty long face as I poured hot water over our Lipton tea bags. “Is there some way we can make Google stop?”
“It’s not Google, per se,” I remarked, proffering a small plate of sugar cubes. Like a true Southerner, she took three. “It’s something computers do, called an ‘algorithm,’ that ranks the terms from billions upon billions of searches that people conduct using Google. And Governor Barbour’s certainly not the only person with a Google problem. If you go to the Google search engine and type in ‘Charlie Sheen,’ ‘Mel Gibson,’ or ‘Rick Santorum,’ you’ll see what I mean. So no, it’s not feasible to make Google stop doing what Google does. But, on the other hand, you might be able to spam those search terms off the top of the list.”
“Spam?” Daisy May’s tone of voice revealed a state of severe befuddlement. “You mean, we get a whole bunch of Barbour supporters to send Google e-mails about buying incredibly cheap Viagra?”
“No,” I clarified, “I’m not talking about e-mail spam, I’m talking about search term spam. Have Haley Barbour’s supporters log in to Google and search for ‘Haley Barbour patriot,’ ‘Haley Barbour hero,’ ‘Haley Barbour freedom,’ ‘Haley Barbour tax cut,’ ‘Haley Barbour gun rights,’ ‘Haley Barbour jobs,’ and so on, for about a dozen sets of search terms like that, until those are the most frequently used sets of search terms. Then the Google search term algorithm will push those other, embarrassing search term phrases off the top of the stack and replace them with ones you like.”
“Are you sure,” Daisy May inquired, “that will work?”
“It almost certainly will,” I allowed, “provided that you have Governor Barbour’s innumerable legions of loyal supporters conduct two or three hundred such searches each, every day for at least two weeks.”
“Okay,” she murmured. “I think I get the idea. But that business you said there, about ‘innumerable legions,’ well, I just don’t know if Governor Barbour actually has that many supporters who know how to… uh… ah…”
“Read?” I offered.
“Um… let’s just say, ‘use computers’ and leave it at that,” she sighed.
“In that case,” I suggested, “you should take some of the huge amounts of money which, thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings, Governor Barbour is no doubt receiving from wealthy business interests, and use it to secretly hire legions of impoverished third-world peasants who are currently sitting at keyboards in places like Mexico working eighteen hour days obtaining virtual weapons and other valuables in on-line video games that their employers subsequently sell to rich, lazy American gamers. Have those poor, benighted, barefoot urchins do all the work entering favorable ‘Haley Barbour’ search term sets – none of them speak very much English, and they certainly won’t understand what it is they’re doing, so it’s not likely they will be able to fink on you. Besides, their employers would kill them if they did, anyway, and they know it. And furthermore, their employers can provide services like IP address spoofing that will make Google think that every query comes from a different computer. All for about a penny a search.”
“Um… er…” she stuttered, “…that business you said about ‘huge amounts of money’ from ‘wealthy business interests?’”
“Yes?” I responded expectantly.
“That…” she shook her head slowly, “I mean, yes, we’re getting some contributions from rich people, and others are promising more later, if things work out, but tell me – how many Google searches do you think it would take to clean out all those nasty things that pop up now?”
“A couple hundred million,” I estimated. “Governor Barbour’s remarks have sparked the interest of quite a few folks, all around the world. And they’d still be using the undesirable search term sets themselves, constantly, every day, so you’d have to swamp them completely with goodie-goodie spam.”
“I don’t know if we have enough money for that at the moment,” Daisy May confessed. “I’ll have to check. So, all right, then, our next problem is Governor Barbour’s son, Sterling.”
“Definitely,” I confirmed, “I’ve heard about him. His latest stunt was to write a rambling e-mail message complaining to Bill Kristol about Kristol’s snarky op-ed piece in the Weekly Standard that criticized his father. Let me see if I’ve got that somewhere… ah, yes… ‘Is your plan to just rip good conservatives to pieces and let the president have it? Or is it personal?’ Pretty spicy stuff, there. And how about this: ‘Despite your best efforts, if he decides to run, he will likely win the nomination. He has beaten “your” guy before. Who have you got this time, T-Paw?’ And, of course, this gem: ‘I am a private person, and don’t want him to run.’ Now what, do you suppose, is this kid’s major malfunction? Did his mommy and daddy, perhaps, not praise him sufficiently during his early potty training?”
Daisy May turned red as a beet. “Potty training?”
“I’m just trying to figure out what would explain,” I frankly spoke, “why, instead of sending that e-mail to Bill Kristol, he sent it to the editor of the Weekly Standard, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Fox News. It’s as if he didn’t want to risk Kristol simply ignoring it, which Kristol might well have done if Sterling had sent it directly to him, and hadn’t carbon-copied enough other recipients to ensure it could never, ever remain a discreet communication between him and a person who he felt had defamed his father. And, as I have just observed on my desktop machine, as of today, the first three hundred Google search results for ‘Sterling Barbour’ are almost entirely about that screed he sent Bill Kristol. I’d say this situation is straight out of the later works of Sigmund Freud, ma’am. What’s up with the Governor’s bouncing baby boy here?”
Daisy May slowly stared down at the floor as she cleared her throat rather pointedly. “What I heard,” she confided, “is that he’s trying to get back at his father for naming him ‘Sterling Barbour.’”
“And from the looks of it,” I remarked, “so far he’s doing a pretty good job. If your boss actually does run for President, and little Sterling distinguishes himself like this again, during, say, the New Hampshire Republican primary or the second week of October, 2012, the results could be completely disastrous.”
“We’re very…” Daisy gulped, “…aware of that. What would you suggest, Mr. Collins?”
“That Governor Barbour,” I recommended, “give his son the Billy Carter treatment.”
“Huh?” Daisy May’s blank stare met my gaze as she looked up from the floor.
“When Governor Jimmy Carter ran for President,” I elaborated, “he was saddled with a problematic relative, just like Governor Barbour is now. Billy Carter was a such a confirmed dipsomaniac, a brand of novelty beer was named after him. Today, as a matter of fact, cans of Billy Beer are collector’s items. Billy also managed to get into all kinds of absurd scrapes and situations that kept his name in the media on a nearly constant basis. Fortunately, also just like Jimmy Carter, your boss is from the South, and thanks to writers like Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner and Truman Capote, Americans not only expect Southern families to contain unusual, eccentric, odd-ball personalities, they actually welcome and appreciate them. It serves to perpetuate their romantic notions of Southern culture.”
“Romantic notions?” Daisy May, having recovered her wits, politely demanded in a skeptical tone. “What ever do you mean?”
“Come now, Ms. Glampers…”
“That’s Mrs. Glampers,” she interjected.
“…Mrs. Glampers,” I persisted, “let us face the facts here, shall we? Do you suppose Forrest Gump could have possibly been from anywhere but below the Mason-Dixon line?”
“No,” she replied thoughtfully, “I don’t guess he could have. Nobody would have believed somebody like that could have existed anywhere else.”
“Exactly,” I assured her. “And that’s why Jimmy Carter was able to get elected President of the United States. Had Carter been from, say, California or New York, his brother Billy would have been a truly damning albatross. But because he was from Georgia, Carter had the option of not just acknowledging that his brother was a zany, clowning, alcoholic buffoon of the first water, but actually celebrating the fact. Then, since Billy and Jimmy were brothers from the South, the public perceived them like characters created by the likes of Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty or Harper Lee – members of a family straight out of a typical Southern Gothic novel. Then, of course, the worse Billy behaved, the better and more virtuous that made Jimmy – it had to be like that, you see, because that’s how characters in those stories always turn out.”
“So,” Daisy May concluded, “what you’re saying is, if some smart aleck reporter asks Governor Barbour about his son, he should just make some jokes about what a congenital fool Sterling is and move on?”
“Precisely,” I agreed. “Something like, ‘Yeah, that boy Sterling of mine, he certain sure is a caution sometimes, shootin’ his mouth off every whip-stitch, back-and-to, back-and-to, just so, jabbering about I don’t know what-all, like a sun-struck jay bird in a preacher’s briar patch. Don’t y’all pay him no never-mind; that’s just how the Good Lord made him.’ A few lines like that, and the American public will readily get the idea – ol’ Sterling, he’s touched in the head, don’t take him serious nur nothin’, just go right on and enjoy the entertainment, ‘cause the Barbour family is straight from the honeysuckled heart of the South, all festooned with magnolia blossoms and drippin’ with Spanish moss, and that makes everything okay. Nosiree, they don’t mind a lick, gawk at that there durned id-jut all you want – everybody back home does, too, it’s traditional.”
“I understand; however, I fear that such a… characterization would surely break that poor boy’s heart,” Daisy May fretted.
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “Does Governor Barbour want to be President of the United States or not?”
“I sincerely suspect,” she vouched, “that he most definitely does. But are you certain that’s the only way?”
“No,” I replied, “it’s not the only way. If you can figure out how to ensure Sterling never gets near a telephone or computer between now and the second Tuesday of November 2012, then do that instead.”
“Oh, all right,” Daisy May relented. “The next thing I need to talk to you about, then, is how to expand Governor Barbour’s appeal beyond his ideological political base.”
“In other words,” I concluded, “how to get independents to vote for him.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Daisy May confirmed.
“Well, the first thing you need to realize about independent voters,” I began, “is that, unlike Democrats and Republicans, generally speaking, the typical independent voter doesn’t have a political ideology.”
“Really?” Daisy May’s voice conveyed a high note of incredulity. “If that’s the case, then, what do they believe in?”
“Nothing,” I declared, “and that’s how they like it. Independent voters are fickle, selfish, greedy, ignorant bozos. They’re not citizens, they’re consumers. Not that they’d admit to it, not in a million years, but that’s what they are. On one hand, they don’t want to pay taxes – they’d like it best, in fact, if everybody else paid taxes and they didn’t have to. On the other hand, however, they are universally imbued with a free-floating, all-encompassing sense of entitlement which leads them to conclude that the government exists to serve them, and them alone. The only government programs and policies they approve of are the ones that benefit them – they’re totally against anything else, you see, because if something the government does isn’t benefiting them, then it is, by definition, totally wasteful.”
“What about foreign policy, then?” Daisy May asked.
“Same story, essentially,” I assured her. “Most independent voters can’t even find the United States of America on a map of the world, but they know that, whoever those towel-heads, boogie-woogies, bush babies, slopes and Euro-faggots are out there, they want them to respect and fear the United States; and they don’t want it to cost them any money, either.”
“So,” Daisy May reasoned, “that means Governor Barbour’s criticism of our presence in Afghanistan, and his statements concerning control of Pentagon spending stand to be a plus factor with independents?”
“Governor Barbour’s stand on foreign policy,” I cautioned, “is a double-blade sword. Right now, independents are tired of Afghanistan, no doubt about it, and Governor Barbour can definitely garner their votes by criticizing the Obama administration. But suppose CIA drones manage to blow Osama bin Laden to smithereens right around Halloween in 2012? What then? Independents are usually not very engaged with politics, but stage a spectacle like that, and they’ll be thumping their chests harder, and yelling ‘U-S-A!’ louder than the Republicans. And, what’s more, at that point, candidate Haley Barbour is going to look a lot more like Benedict Arnold and a lot less like George Washington. Bottom line, the whole thing could easily backfire. The risks outweigh the benefits.”
“Then what,” Daisy May beseeched, “should he say instead if he wants to attract enough independents to win the general election? Without alienating so many Republicans, of course, that they vote for somebody else in the primaries?”
“He needs,” I counseled, “to quit talking about foreign policy and defense spending altogether. They are both way too complicated for him. Anything he says will just present an opportunity for his opponents to skewer him. He should just say America needs a strong defense and that Moslem terrorists are bad and must be defeated. Beyond that – no details, no plans, no nothing. Any time those items come up, he should immediately change the subject and blame Democrats for the recession, unemployment, high taxes, runaway health care costs, illegal immigrants, crime, drugs, gay marriage and unwed motherhood. Then he should promise prosperity, jobs, tax cuts, and a return to law and order. That’s the kind of hogwash the precious, coveted “swing voter,” which is to say, the American political independent voter, wants to hear.”
“That’s all?” Daisy May’s eyes went wide with incredulity. “You mean, Governor Barbour doesn’t need to say anything more than that?”
“The more he tells the public what he really thinks and believes,” I warned, “the less likely it is they will vote for him. So instead, he should rely on the one asset that could actually put him in the White House.”
“And what,” Daisy May demanded, “would this asset be?”
“His authentic, corn-bread-stuffin’, sweet-potato-packin’, black-strap-molasses-slatherin’, grits-and-red-eye-gravy eatin’, pit-barbecue-snarfin’, pecan-pie munchin’, ridiculously-sweetened-ice-tea-guzzlin’ deep-sizzlin’-pork-lard-fried Southern personality,” I proclaimed.
“That’s all?” Daisy May whispered.
“Yep,” I confirmed. “The rubes just can’t never get enough of that genuine Dixie, and frankly, that’s all Haley Barbour’s got, so he might as well use it.”
“Well,” Daisy May huffed as she rose abruptly, snatching her briefcase and heading for the door, “if you think that’s all there is to Haley Barbour, I guess maybe I had better quit wasting my time.”
“Maybe,” I called after her, “Haley Barbour should quit wasting his.”