And to Think That I Saw it on Pennsylvania Avenue, column by Howard Graubard

It may be a tad overoptimistic to say that, by the time most of you see this piece, the election will be over, but at least, in most cases, the voting itself will have been concluded (except for some of the folks still waiting on line in areas of Georgia with heavy minority populations).

This presents quite a dilemma for the political writer with a once a month deadline, falling at the worst possible time, whose thoughts will be rendered moot pretty much upon publication, as words intended to be timeless end up DOA.

However, even writers who publish instantaneously face a world in which a Google search of what they said last week can render them into laughingstocks. Lord knows that in the decade I spent as a political blogger, throwing someone’s words back at them ofttimes ended up a vehicle for a cheap laugh, if not always a salient point.

And yet, there are times when a writer aiming low ends up bringing us a message for the ages.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, as a high school or college student then entranced with E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime” and “Book of Daniel,” I came across a used paperback copy of a 1968 literary journal called the “New American Review” which contained what was then an otherwise uncollected short story by Doctorow, about a Dylan-like folk singer, called “The Songs of Billy Bathgate” (mostly unrelated to the later Doctorow  novel, except that both protagonists were orphans).

I bought the collection for the Doctorow piece and then discovered it also contained a short story ostensibly about politics by Robert Coover called “The Cat in the Hat for President.”

At the time the story was published, Coover was also issuing his second novel. By contrast, this story seemed little but an amusing, albeit rather disturbing, trifle. The author clearly was not without political knowledge, as some of the minor details in the story rang true and savvy, but ultimately, the tale, obviously intended to be satirical, seemed to fail on its own terms.

It was not merely that the surreal contents were fantastical. We were, after all, then living in the aftermath of works like “Doctor Strangelove” and “The President’s Analyst.” Moreover, political satire had incorporated the cartoonish since before Gulliver began his first journey. But the race is not always to the Swift, and in Coover’s case, the problem was that this story seemed unrelatable to any politics a sane observer of the time might recognize.

But as clueless as Coover may have seemed in the late 60s, or even for decades beyond, this tale, later republished in somewhat different form as a novella called “A Political Fable,” seems oddly prescient today.

The narrator is the savvy Chair of a national political which seems almost certain to lose the next presidential election. However, the Party’s convention is disrupted by the arrival of Dr, Suess’ “The Cat in the Hat,” complete with his clean-up machine and companions resembling “Thing One” and “Thing Two.” The Cat declares himself a candidate, with the catchy slogan “I Can Lead it All by Myself.”

At the nomination, the Cat rides in on roller skates, carrying a rake, with a cake, topped by a fish in a fishbowl; the Cat falls down, and the bowl floods the entire convention, and nearly everyone end up inside the fish. Eventually, helpless against the tide, the Party nominates The Cat.

The Cat’s running mate is an otherwise dull Governor who spends his time rationalizing The Cat’s otherwise incomprehensible behavior in a manner just sane enough for the public to swallow.

Basically, the public is told to take The Cat seriously, but not literally.

Despite a large popular following, the Cat almost totally lacks self-control and is impervious to adult supervision. In the end he manages to offend practically everyone.  with his antics.

Sound familiar?

The Thing One and Thing Two characters, Joe and Ned, bear some resemblance to Junior and Eric, or perhaps Jared and Ivanka. The cynical campaign manager, Clark, is perhaps most reminiscent of Steve Bannon. The Cat’s chaotic clean-up machine fails to alter the reality of the Swamp; in fact, it mostly makes worse all it touches.

I would call Coover a great visionary, but ultimately his seemingly crazy vision fails because it is not crazy enough.

In the story, the Cat’s campaign aides end up tarred and feathered at one of their rallies, the running mate is assassinated, and The Cat is captured by a mob, tied upside down, skinned alive, roasted and eaten.

In the mid-70s this seemed to me grotesque, but reality topped it.

In reality, we might not have eaten The Cat’s steaks, but, as a Nation, we ultimately swallowed him whole, actually putting him in the White House, where his performance is perhaps best analogized by comedian John Mullaney’s routine about a horse loose in a hospital (see,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZMxgPxXU&list=FLDY7okKwIpaNrs5KhKi3tWQ&index=166).

Even though sanity ultimately prevails in the Coover story, the Bannon-like character is rumored to have recovered the Cat’s chapeau, and there are rumored to be 26 more cats inside the Hat.

Meanwhile, the next Congress will almost certainly contain members who believe that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who operate a global child sex-trafficking ring.

As a slogan, “Return to Normalcy” worked for Warren Harding, and I am of the belief that the country wants a lot less excitement than it’s been getting from the White House. Joe Biden may be our dullest candidate since Walter Mondale, but in this election Biden’s dullness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

Meanwhile, let us hope we all do not end up getting boiled in beezlenut oil because the cartoonish funhouse mirror we call the Electoral College, additionally cracked by Russian and homegrown disinformation, as well as voter suppression, has been rendered deaf to our cries to “We Are Here, We Are Here, We Are Here,” with the Cat in the Hat re-elected and morphing into Yertle the Turtle.

“Donald J. Trump, I don’t care HOW! Donald J. Trump, will you please go now?!”.

It may be a tad overoptimistic to say that, by the time most of you see this piece, the election will be over, but at least, in most cases, the voting itself will have been concluded (except for some of the folks still waiting on line in areas of Georgia with heavy minority populations).

This presents quite a dilemma for the political writer with a once a month deadline, falling at the worst possible time, whose thoughts will be rendered moot pretty much upon publication, as words intended to be timeless end up DOA.

However, even writers who publish instantaneously face a world in which a Google search of what they said last week can render them into laughingstocks. Lord knows that in the decade I spent as a political blogger, throwing someone’s words back at them ofttimes ended up a vehicle for a cheap laugh, if not always a salient point.

And yet, there are times when a writer aiming low ends up bringing us a message for the ages.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, as a high school or college student then entranced with E.L. Doctorow’s “Ragtime” and “Book of Daniel,” I came across a used paperback copy of a 1968 literary journal called the “New American Review” which contained what was then an otherwise uncollected short story by Doctorow, about a Dylan-like folk singer, called “The Songs of Billy Bathgate” (mostly unrelated to the later Doctorow  novel, except that both protagonists were orphans).

I bought the collection for the Doctorow piece and then discovered it also contained a short story ostensibly about politics by Robert Coover called “The Cat in the Hat for President.”

At the time the story was published, Coover was also issuing his second novel. By contrast, this story seemed little but an amusing, albeit rather disturbing, trifle. The author clearly was not without political knowledge, as some of the minor details in the story rang true and savvy, but ultimately, the tale, obviously intended to be satirical, seemed to fail on its own terms.

It was not merely that the surreal contents were fantastical. We were, after all, then living in the aftermath of works like “Doctor Strangelove” and “The President’s Analyst.” Moreover, political satire had incorporated the cartoonish since before Gulliver began his first journey. But the race is not always to the Swift, and in Coover’s case, the problem was that this story seemed unrelatable to any politics a sane observer of the time might recognize.

But as clueless as Coover may have seemed in the late 60s, or even for decades beyond, this tale, later republished in somewhat different form as a novella called “A Political Fable,” seems oddly prescient today.

The narrator is the savvy Chair of a national political which seems almost certain to lose the next presidential election. However, the Party’s convention is disrupted by the arrival of Dr, Suess’ “The Cat in the Hat,” complete with his clean-up machine and companions resembling “Thing One” and “Thing Two.” The Cat declares himself a candidate, with the catchy slogan “I Can Lead it All by Myself.”

At the nomination, the Cat rides in on roller skates, carrying a rake, with a cake, topped by a fish in a fishbowl; the Cat falls down, and the bowl floods the entire convention, and nearly everyone end up inside the fish. Eventually, helpless against the tide, the Party nominates The Cat.

The Cat’s running mate is an otherwise dull Governor who spends his time rationalizing The Cat’s otherwise incomprehensible behavior in a manner just sane enough for the public to swallow.

Basically, the public is told to take The Cat seriously, but not literally.

Despite a large popular following, the Cat almost totally lacks self-control and is impervious to adult supervision. In the end he manages to offend practically everyone.  with his antics.

Sound familiar?

The Thing One and Thing Two characters, Joe and Ned, bear some resemblance to Junior and Eric, or perhaps Jared and Ivanka. The cynical campaign manager, Clark, is perhaps most reminiscent of Steve Bannon. The Cat’s chaotic clean-up machine fails to alter the reality of the Swamp; in fact, it mostly makes worse all it touches.

I would call Coover a great visionary, but ultimately his seemingly crazy vision fails because it is not crazy enough.

In the story, the Cat’s campaign aides end up tarred and feathered at one of their rallies, the running mate is assassinated, and The Cat is captured by a mob, tied upside down, skinned alive, roasted and eaten.

In the mid-70s this seemed to me grotesque, but reality topped it.

In reality, we might not have eaten The Cat’s steaks, but, as a Nation, we ultimately swallowed him whole, actually putting him in the White House, where his performance is perhaps best analogized by comedian John Mullaney’s routine about a horse loose in a hospital (see,   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZMxgPxXU&list=FLDY7okKwIpaNrs5KhKi3tWQ&index=166).

Even though sanity ultimately prevails in the Coover story, the Bannon-like character is rumored to have recovered the Cat’s chapeau, and there are rumored to be 26 more cats inside the Hat.

Meanwhile, the next Congress will almost certainly contain members who believe that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who operate a global child sex-trafficking ring.

As a slogan, “Return to Normalcy” worked for Warren Harding, and I am of the belief that the country wants a lot less excitement than it’s been getting from the White House. Joe Biden may be our dullest candidate since Walter Mondale, but in this election Biden’s dullness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

Meanwhile, let us hope we all do not end up getting boiled in beezlenut oil because the cartoonish funhouse mirror we call the Electoral College, additionally cracked by Russian and homegrown disinformation, as well as voter suppression, has been rendered deaf to our cries to “We Are Here, We Are Here, We Are Here,” with the Cat in the Hat re-elected and morphing into Yertle the Turtle.

“Donald J. Trump, I don’t care HOW! Donald J. Trump, will you please go now?!”.

A Star-Revue Contributor