See Spot Run

Well, it’s now official: Everyone is running for president. Mike Bloomberg; Fred Thompson; Ralph Nader; Al Gore; Newt Gingrich; Shirley from “What’s Happening”; Jared from Subway—they’re all taking the plunge and campaigning for the highest office.

Or so it seems. We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” realize full well that we are very early into the 2008 presidential election, but we’re already growing tired of it. There are too many candidates as it is, and more keep signing up.

We mean, come on: Pretty soon Martin Luther will announce his candidacy. And he’s been dead for half a millennium. On top of that, he’s German.

(In addition, would the American public vote for a Lutheran for president? And did Martin Luther have per-marital sexual relations? What, moreover, is his view on polygamy? Perhaps Newsweek will run a cover story devoted to these vexing questions.)

Enough already. Pretty much the only folks interested in amassing more presidential candidates are Chris Matthews and Tim Russert. After all, any time they corner someone into appearing on their television programs, they immediately ask them if they’re going to run for commander-in-chief.

In fact, the constant barrage of “Are you going to run?” queries from the chat shows almost makes us wish that everyone were running for president. That way, they couldn’t irk us all with that stupid question.

Quite frankly, if everyone were a candidate for president it would suit our Democratic pals just fine, since it would mean that their beloved illegal immigrants (excuse us, Harry Reid: Undocumented patriots) could be elected to the top job.

Perhaps what most bothers us about the upcoming everyone-but-the-kitchen-sink election is that so much of it is obviously media driven. Although Chris Dodd and Joe Biden have far more legislative experience than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the latter are deemed “frontrunners” and the former “long-shots,” in part because the media don’t take Senators Dodd’s and Biden’s runs seriously.

And the Republicans? They don’t take any of them very seriously.

John McCain’s stance on the Iraq War has forfeited his erstwhile shining reputation amongst the journalists. No longer is he the safe bet for what our dispassionate mainstream media types most love in the primaries—the farthest left of the Republicans.

Instead, they are chomping at the bit for a Chuck Hagel run—even though most Republicans (ourselves included) would prefer to see a G.W.F. Hegel run.

Finally, we’d have a Republican candidate who understands the dialectic. No intellectual lightweight, he. But we’re not sure if he’s a particularly articulate English-speaker. In addition, maybe he’s a little too close to Bush to win the public’s favor. And didn’t Karl Marx quite fancy him?