Former presidential candidate Dr. Carl Perrin is glad he is not running for office in this election. Politicians are pulling out all stops in their effort to dredge up any dirt about their opponents.
Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada criticized mainstream Republicans in these words. “"The Republicans have lost their standards, they've lost their principles ... really that's why the machine in the Republican Party is fighting against me.” Her opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is using her words against her.
In Connecticut Democratic candidate for the Senate Richard Blumenthal seems to have been mixed up about whether or not he served in Vietnam. (He didn’t.) His opponent Linda McMahon questions his veracity. “If he lied about Vietnam,” she asks, “what else is he lying about?”
It turns out that Republican candidate for governor of California, Meg Whitman, for nine years had a maid who was an illegal alien. This despite her strong stand about illegal aliens.
And then there is Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for Joe Biden’s old seat in the Senate. Every day new dirt about her appears. She used campaign money for personal expenses, she dabbled in witchcraft, she lied about having a college degree, etc., etc.
Carl Perrin’s heart goes out to these candidates. He knows what it is like to have mud flung at him from all directions. When he was running for the presidency, someone dug up the story about his failure to pay the fine on an overdue library book at the Portland Public Library back in the eighties. Even worse, some mud slinger dredged up the story about his having had contacts with “Natashia,” who may or may not have been a Russian agent.
If he were running in this election, Perrin knows, someone would be digging up a story about his addiction to chocolate or something. He has not decided whether to run for office in 2012, but all the digging and mud slinging gives him pause.
