The Cat in the Hat for President by Robert Coover

Author:Robert Coover
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: OR Books
Published: 2018-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

The Cat was a phenomenal campaigner . . . if that was what he was doing. Tireless, astounding, unpredictable, he was literally everywhere at once, plummeting out of airplanes, umbrella for a parachute, over Butte and Baltimore, popping up out of sewers in Hyannis and Williamsburg, whistle-stopping from Cucamonga to Santa Monica, flying kites in Houston and dropping confetti on Bedford-Stuyvesant, setting up a freak show in the valleys at Gettysburg, bathing in the Chicago River and brushing his teeth in Hot Springs, peddling boxes and foxes to passersby in Old Rampart, Alaska, giving away life insurance in San Francisco, eating grits in Spokane and knishes in Biloxi. He juggled live bears in YeIIowstone, spaceships in Florida, dialects in New York. He fell off Pike’s Peak, doing a handstand on a cane and a vane, and washed up on a door with an oar off Kailua Bay, singing Happy Birthday songs.

But if he was unpredictable, he was also unmanageable. I made the mistake the first couple of weeks of arranging speaking engagements for him—the Cat missed them all, popping up at the Opponent’s rallies instead. The Opponent, political genius and campaign veteran though he was, was at as much of a loss as Boone or I had been at our Convention. I admit I was secretly pleased to see the sonuvabitch discomfited, but I couldn’t go along with Clark’s claim that the Cat’s goofy gambits were exposing the madness of normalcy. Okay, I realize the Opponent—Mr. America, his party’s buttons and posters called him—was guilty of all the old clichés about “free enterprise” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and “unalienable rights” and “the American Way of Life” and “defense of freedom” and “government is a business and should be run like one,” all the usual crap, but what the hell, that’s pragmatic politics, that’s winning elections, that’s talking the tribal language, and it’s not what Clark liked to call “our national depravity.” And sure, the Cat’s playback of these old saws in his singsong ditties did make them sound pretty nutty. “This Wee of Life is rife with strife!” he’d singalong. And:

“Some laws are no!

Some laws are yes!

All flaws are good

For bus-i-ness!

Some laws are may!

Some laws are must!

The Manikin Way:

In God we rust!”

Or he’d carry that “government of the people” jazz out to “until the people, down the people, between the people, across the people, past the people, into the people, round the people, beyond the people, since the people,” and so on to “government up the people.” That always brought the house down, but I wonder if the Cat ever knew why. I mean, he just didn’t seem to have that kind of mind. If he had any mind at all.

Clark was convinced the Opponent was mad. And therefore his party was mad. And in fact any nation that could seriously consider for President a man who, for example, in Paterson

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