By:John Saccenti
So you’re getting ready to vote. You’ve watched the debates, perused a few articles in newspapers and national magazines and even sniffed a few pieces of junk mail sent by one of many candidates. Ambitious voters may even have visited a Web site or two, just to get a better sense of who the candidates are and what they stand for.
But Tuesday is fast approaching, and even with this little bit of research, you are as undecided as ever.
Do you vote for the guy whose ideas appeal to your own interests, even though he may speak like an idiot?
How about the candidate who once mentioned a policy you thought might help underprivileged children? But you’re not sure if he actually said it, or what it was he said.
Will it be that you vote along party lines, choosing candidates from your party of choice?
Or perhaps you’ll just sit at home watching election results pour in during halftime of a basketball game, resigned to the fact that your vote doesn’t count.
Despite the apparent abundance of information about candidates, making a decision on who will best serve the people is hard. There are advertisements saying our favorite candidate is a heel, and there are ads saying our candidate is the right man to lead our country into the next century.
It’s all very confusing and, for a large portion of the population, choosing a president could very well come down to something as simple as who is the best dressed.
Given the inability of most candidates to lay out their platforms in a clear, easy to understand way without slandering their opponents at the same time, picking something frivolous may be the best way for many of us to go.
So let’s make things simple this year and vote for the candidate who has the nicest hair. It’s much easier to vote that way. It keeps us from having to learn about school vouchers, property tax, nuclear arms proliferation and the inheritance tax. And those of you who do know what those issues are won’t have to spend valuable time researching where each candidate stands.
In any case, many candidates already have confused us, so why not take the power away from their public relations machines and set some guidelines of our own.
So, who has the best hair? Once we have that answer, we will have our president. We should begin our research by looking through magazines — while waiting for a haircut.
Vogue, Seventeen and People magazine all are valuable sources of information. After a quick scan, you might find that short hair cuts, once the playground for conservative types, now are sported by rebellious sorts. On the other hand, long hair, once denoting liberals, can’t be counted for anything anymore, especially because only a select few have it, including many ad execs and computer experts. Definitely not the sort we want to give any more power to.
Perhaps our candidate of choice should have a pompadour or pigtails? Neither seem all that presidential, but with the right advertising campaign, both styles could rocket up the polls.
Imagine this campaign ad: “Could you vote for a man who has the audacity to use three dollops of hair gel each day.
“(Candidates name), a man afraid of a bad hair day.”
Ads like that are sure to get valuable swing voters, the type given to crew cuts.
John Saccenti is news editor of The South Brunswick Post. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]<1i>
