The Keating Era

Going through an old file folder, I came upon a document that had somehow survived since the early 1970s. I only vaguely recall the circumstances surrounding its production. The Developmental Studies Department had gone on a retreat (the lingo back then for “paid vacation disguised as work”) to some rustic guest ranch somewhere out of town. We had Meetings during the days but were left to our own devices after dark. For my compadres Bill Keating, Mark Miller and for me, those devices involved a fair amount of strong drink.

So we met the final morning of the retreat more than a bit the worse for wear. Fortunately, no Meeting had been scheduled before 10:00, so we three miscreants had time to recuperate from the night before.

We’d all been following Nixon’s didoes – invading Cambodia, obliterating Hanoi, breaking into the Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate, and so on – with revulsion and not much hope, once McGovern had been crushed the previous November, that Nixon or his revolting crew would ever be held to account for any of their crimes.

Hence the cynical tone of this “campaign plan.” We’d discovered out country was not what it purported to be. I think we felt rather as Nelson Algren did after he emerged from college in the early 1930s: “Everything I’d been told was wrong….I’d been told, I’d been assured, that it was a strive and succeed world….But this is not what America was. America was not socialized and I resented very deeply that I’d been lied to….You had to reverse everything you’d been taught, mechanically as well as morally.”

While we may have resented being lied to, we didn’t let it get us down, not on that day, anyhow. Instead, we had a hell of a good time forgetting our hangovers by creating this dadaist “campaign document.” Reading it again, in this fourth year of Trump, I’m reminded of what Vance Bourjaily wrote in his novel The Man Who Knew Kennedy, whose title he’d adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s The Man Who Knew Coolidge:  “… life these days, sir, seems to teach a different desperation.  We are sad where you were bitter, scarred where you were stung, and the things we see around us aren’t really jolly enough to satirize – we’re lucky when we can find them jolly enough to be revolting.”

But still, I’m glad to have evidence of our laughter during what we then thought were the worst possible circumstances. If I see today’s circumstances as a disimprovement, I expect that’s merely a sign of aging. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote to his friend Stig Claesson, “The late humorist James Thurber wrote a fable set in a medieval court, and he has the Royal Astronomer report that all the stars are going out! It turns out that he is simply going blind. I am probably making the same mistake.”

The Keating Era Campaign

-symbol: chicken
-slogan: A chicken in every garage and hats for the poor

Roy, Hoppy, and Ernest Tubbs: first believers in The Keating Era

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10 Second Spot:

            Open – chicken – fade – Ann Margret’s cleavage, waist, ass struggling into parachute harness – cut to plane door – Ann jumps – free fall tits and ass shots – music intro: “God Bless America” in time with red, white and blue parachutes snapping open – zoom onto print of Independence Hall stenciled on a white parachute panel – lap dissolve to real Independence Hall – track inside to Kate Smith with head up Liberty Bell – vocal “God Bless America” – cut to Philadelphia Forum (in time: “Land that I love”) – tight zoom to Dave Schultz smashing guy’s nose – music down – Keating commentary voice over: WHY IS DEMOCRACY (visual: Blue Light Special at K-Mart) BETTER THAN (bloody, pulpy nose) ANY OTHER FORM (bottom to top pan of Kate Smith) OF GOVERNMENT (Pacer) EXCEPT TYRANNY (storm troopers goose-stepping) OR TYRANNY? (visual: Keating with arm around chicken)

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Working Draft – The Keating Era: Painful Revolution

song: “I’m Leaving It Up to You”
answer for all hard questions: “Because it’s there”
answer for all followups: “All right, it’s not there”
economic concept: Why go half way? Give the richest person all the money. But
                               what he do then?

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BILL KEATING SPEAKS OUT

ON CREDENTIALS: My credentials for the Presidency are as good as anyone’s, but I have not and will not show them to anyone, because, when elected, I will declare all credentials null and void. Then I’ll show.

ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS: I have often had women over for dinner. They’re the same as the rest of us. They all use forks. I pledge to have women over for dinner at the White House a lot.

ON CLASS WARFARE: America was born a classless society. Now, two-hundred years later, ten score years after birth, America is dominated by two classes, the Very Rich and the Even Richer. Therefore I say to you that they have won.

ON ENERGY: Many people are saying that we can’t plan for rational energy use in this country, a country which in a scant ten years sent men to the moon. I think they’re right. It’s easy to plan to do something, but who wants to plan to not do things? Therefore, I plan to encourage the American people to drive around a lot. I will set an example by keeping Air Force One in the air 24 hours a day, whether I am in it or not. When we run out of gas, then we’ll know we have a crisis, and someone will figure something out.

NATIONAL DEFENSE: The defense industry if a gigantic, wasteful boondoggle. I don’t see how we can get along without that. I plan to encourage production of as many totally useless, malfunctioning, expensive weapons as possible. When we sell them to our enemies and friends, then everyone will become hopelessly weak.

ON ELECTION REFORM: The amount of money being spent, and the number of man-hours being wasted on presidential elections is a national scandal. Look at England. We need a queen. When elected, I will appoint one and immediately resign. If I don’t, then the people will know they’ve been tricked again.

ON AMERICA: America used to be a country that believed in its own special destiny. What has happened? We’ve wised up. Now we know that our destiny is to blunder along trying to avoid the consequences of our own stupidity, just as all other nations have had to do. Why else would you be sitting around looking to clowns like me and the other candidates for advice?  There could be worse destinies.  What if we were all corn borers? What then? You don’t know, do you?

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All these years later, I can only mourn that we didn’t pursue the Keating campaign to a victorious end. We certainly need more hats for the poor.