HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
PAST IMPERFECT
Posted, August 18, 2008,  12:01 p.m
    

When handsome John F. Kennedy was seeking the presidency, the man with looks that could have put his image on the cover of a Harlequin Romance novel, America’s women fantasized all sorts of things about the relatively young president. I doubt many of the fantasies had to do with Kennedy sitting across the table from the Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev. And didn’t they all love those below the radar rumors of Kennedy’s relationship with Hollywood bombshell Marilyn Monroe? Of course, no one really wanted to know the truth about Kennedy’s extracurricular activities; they just wanted to enjoy the rumors. A little bit of bad-boy enhanced the image of the future president. Yes, American’s love their rascals.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) inherited the presidency following the assassination of Kennedy and presided over our government during one of the worst times in the Twentieth Century. He was the perfect president for the times. LBJ’s image was like the state he hailed from, Texas-sized. America needed someone bigger than life and for a time “raw and boisterous” Johnson endeared himself to voters as a man who worked hard and played hard. Images of him driving across his Texas ranch in his Texas-sized Cadillac a beer in hand, his devoted Lady Bird sitting by his side in that ostentatious symbol of success became the stuff of legends.

Jimmy Carter the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia shocked Americans with his 1976 Playboy Interview with writer Robert Sheer but not because he’d granted an interview to Playboy, but because of what he said in the interview.

“Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us...I've looked on a lot of women with lust.” Jimmy Carter, by the way, is the only president to thus far have granted an interview to Playboy despite the fact that the shocking interview might have catapulted Carter across the threshold to the presidency.

Is there any President of the Twentieth Century who had that mischievous gleam in his eye more than Ronald Reagan? The former actor turned politician was the quintessential naughty and nice politician. Married and divorced from actress Jane Wyman with whom he had an affair before she divorced her first husband, and remarried to Hollywood starlet Nancy Davis, with whom he fathered a child before they were married, Reagan had a way of using his former Hollywood career to his advantage. The right wing was happy to accept the boy from Hollywoodland as their candidate because despite his questionable earlier profession, if not moral choices, he brilliantly used his acting ability to seduce America.

We all knew who Bill Clinton was, but we elected him President despite his well-reported philandering and his questionable moral character. And as Jimmy Carter had an endearing but eccentric mother, so did Clinton. Miss Lillian and Virginia Kelley were two independent-minded ladies who raised strong leaders. The unconventional nature of both mothers only added to their son’s mystique.

One candidate who lost his bid for the presidency was Al Gore. Looking back we all realize that George W. Bush’s win against Al Gore would turn out to be America’s loss. But bad boy Tush, with his history of partying and his “adorable” personality won him the presidency against the wooden, never in his life did he do anything wrong, Gore. In Tush’s second bid for the presidency he used his personality to maintain his presidency against the next I never did anything wrong in my life candidate, John Kerry.

Which takes us to the two candidates running for president today: There is no question that John McCain has that touch of the Blarney, the naughty boy turned nice whose exploits during his early years at the Naval Academy are the stuff of legends but whose life was redeemed when he became the POW and survived those years as a prisoner of the Vietcong. Reporters love the endearing Mac, a prankster with a wonderful, if sometimes odd sense of humor, a bad boy made good, with, by the way, a 95-year-old mother not unlike Miss Lillian and Virginia Kelley, who isn’t above taking a swipe at her own son when she feels like it.  Mac isn’t called the Maverick for nothing. And despite his seriousness in all things war-related one senses McCain’s Fonzie within.

Not so Barack Obama who while nearly if not quite charming, and when it suits him personable often seems to take himself far too seriously and therefore comes off as not one of the guys, but boorish and superior. Even when he speaks of his youthful exploits and mentions his drug and alcohol abuse, he does so not as a mature man who has made peace with his past and can look back at his transgressions with a confident sense of humor that allows him to laugh at himself, but more as a man still needing to psychoanalyze his imperfect behavior in order to come to terms with it. What is it that haunts Barack Obama?

Yeeeooooooooooooow, the guy is maddening! Knock knock, who's in there? Like, could you lighten up, bro’? Give your Grandma Madelyn some suga’.  Embrace your inner chile’. You’re contrived; you’ve become a caricature of yourself. Get down. Get dirty. Have some fun. Show us you feel our pain.

Because if you don’t and if history is prelude, John McCain, the Peck’s Bad Boy of this election cycle will be our next president.