The Best Man

As most of our friends have noted, each of the Presidential candidates was, at best, the lesser of two evils. So what was there to do but chide ourselves as ineffectual intellectuals as we stopped traffic while entering to grow in wisdom?

Still, there is a touch of the utopian idealist in us, and we decided to find out who the country's best-educated studentry would choose if the real world were put in its deserved place.

"Anybody at all? At all...," responded a junior as he massaged his belly. "God, I don't know. Nobody. Nobody is right. Nobody could be President," and he wandered off.

A short fellow with gold-rimmed eyeglasses said, "I'd pick Toshiro Mifune. There'd be no screwing around. You know, in Yojimbo, Mifune says "better if all these men were dead.' It's a great movie. You should see it."

One straight-faced student declared, "Salvador Dali! It suddenly came to me that it would be appropriate to have a surrealist as President. Our country--so disjointed, only a surrealist could put America back together again."

"Norman Mailer," a fellow in blue jeans quickly answered. "Now that the Chinese and French have achieved the ultimate weapon, we ought to switch the competition away from weaponry, as Mailer says, to orgasms. I'd follow him."

Four ravishing Radcliffe girls turned to the nearest Harvard man and chimed, "Oh, I'd pick you."

A crew cut sophomore in a white shirt suggested, "Jesus."

"Really?" we asked.

"Oh no. No, no, no. Adlai Stevenson. Because, because...," he said as his eyes became glassy, "I can't put it in words. He's such a qualified liberal."

We walked back along Mass Ave. whistling the tune to Stevenson, Stevenson, If You Vote for Stevenson.