I’m running. Yes, I’m really running. One more time. Just not too fast, because at my time in life you don’t want to trip and bust your new knees. I’m a pretty damned good athlete. Young people like Bernie Sanders can take it slow in the carpool lane, but I’m running, because this is a battle for the soul of this nation. We can’t let old men like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris steal our future. I wish we were in high school — I could take him behind the gym. You know, I’d like to take both of them behind the gym. That’s what I wish.
My days have never been busier. The first thing I do in the morning is check if my teeth are clean. They are, because they’ve spent the night in a glass by my bed. I get up, do some light stretching, and take a shower. It’s good to be clean.
Breakfast is a smoothie if I’ve forgotten to put my teeth in, or some low-cal, low-fat crap that the doctor makes me eat. He says it’s too many years on the campaign trail. I’ve clogged my arteries from all that soliciting votes in diners. He’s Indian, but hey. In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.
Ordinary Americans are capable of extraordinary things. I should know. I’ve known eight presidents, three of them intimately. I’m a white man in the prime of life. I understand the core values of this nation, so I know how to speak to the racist morons in Pennsylvania. You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am. I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. But I do have a cellphone. It’s got big numbers so I can dial Barack America any time I like. We’re friends, and now you ask, I’d bus his kids to school any day. I like black folk.
I like young people too. I’ve supported affirmative women’s feminism since Hanoi Jane invented it in the late Eighties. When I was Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, I allowed Anita Hill to face an all-male panel in the Clarence Thomas hearings. I still give the ladies a helping hand whenever I can. Like they say, you’re only as young as you feel. Guys, it’s a new century. We’re past the days when a guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it’, and then said, ‘I made a mistake’.
I take the Amtrak to work, and I keep up with the sounds of the new generation by plugging an earpiece into my pocket radio. I love Harry Belafonte. I mean, you got the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.
When I get to the office, I take a nap before lunch. Trump calls me ‘Sleepy Joe’, but I do my best thinking when I’m napping. I’m worried about the future. There’s so many challenges: Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. We need leadership. When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television, and he explained what was happening. He didn’t just run his lip on the Twitter like that dumb kid Trump. If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.
Lunch is salad, iced tea, and a handful of steroids. Then I take another nap. I’m experienced, so I know how to conserve my energy. Now, I did say that Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America, but times change. Everything that has made America America is at stake, and I want to save America America for our generation. Trump does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.
I’m not the candidate of the 1 percent. Well, last time I ran, I was. But the 1 percent of folks who voted for me in the Iowa caucuses aren’t the same 1 percent. They’re good folks. I know how to connect with them because I’m a white guy of their generation, and they respect me because they’re dumb as a sack of rocks. But I know how to connect with black folk too. If the Republicans get in again, they’re going to put y’all back in chains.
I leave the office around 3, take the train home. I hit the La-Z-Boy for some horizontal reflection — I loved the new Mickey Rooney — then fix a sandwich. White bread, because I don’t like picking seeds out of my teeth.
I don’t sleep much these days, but when I do, I dream I’m running, just in slow motion. When I wake up, I read a little in bed, mostly political books. That’s where I find my best ideas for speeches. At the moment, I’m reading about a failed Welsh politician called Neil Kinnock. They kept knocking him down, and he kept getting back up like a man with two new hips. There’s a stack of ‘em on the night stand, next to the oxygen cylinder and defibrillator: The Neil Kinnock Story, Kinnock: Study in Failure, Neil Kinnock: My Failed Career, and my favorite, The Speeches of Neil Kinnock. I’ve got two copies of that one. I keep the other one in the bathroom. If you get up in the night as often as I do, you’ll understand.
Dominic Green is Life & Arts Editor of Spectator USA.
