The Secret Life of Willard Mitty
“America is on the brink!” the Impossibly Talented Orator thundered at the podium. “Only the most extreme measures shall save her!” A lock of his hair, slightly dampened with manly sweat, fell rakishly across one eye. Several women in the audience fainted from excitement. Not a Teleprompter was in sight. The Impossibly Talented Orator looked directly into the souls of every single person in the million-strong audience. “Damn the Democrats and their communist puppetmasters! Rise up for freedom! Rise up for success! Rise up——”
“Willard, your smile is fading a bit,” said his wife Ann, interrupting his reverie. “You know a scowl is not acceptable. You promised to keep a friendly smile pasted on your face for the entire campaign. Now keep waving at those middle-class voters.”
Momentarily confused, Willard Mitty raised his arm and waved at the farmers and unemployed coal miners gathered outside the ’50s-era diner hosting that morning’s photo op. A gentle elbow from Ann jolted him back to the task at hand. He looked at his watch — 10:17. Two minutes behind schedule. Willard ate a corn dog and grinned and shook hands with Likely Registered Voters, and then delivered some prepared remarks to the press pool: “When 18.2% of businesses in southern Ohio have trouble completing the paperwork required under section 47a of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it leads to a reduction of manufacturing output as much as 29.5%….”
Mitty finally exhaled as he entered the campaign bus. “We’ve got an 11:30 at the state fair,” said the Assistant Campaign Manager. “I’ll debrief you on the way.” Mitty sighed and gazed out the window at the passing corn fields as the debriefing droned on in the background.
“Captain Mittington! The dastardly Brits have hoisted the mizzen-mast,” cried the bos’n's mate. “There’s no stopping them now!” The Captain peered through the fog of war with his trusty spyglass. He noticed what not even the Brits had realized: the Westerlies had stalled and the English fleet was now in the Doldrums. “All men topside!” cried Captain Mittington. “We’re boarding them a-port come hell or high water!”
The Captain swung onto the British deck and landed just as a cannonball broke his rope. Sparks flew from his blade as he repelled the lunges of several limey swordsmen. “Never shall overly taxed tea touch American shores!” the Captain yelled. With two swift strokes of his cutlass he sliced the moorings which held the cargo of tea on deck. “To the sea! To the sea with your accursed tea!” ——
“The Bipartisan Protocol needs another revision by the Compromise Committee,” interrupted Willard’s Ombudsman of Moderation. “I’ve faxed the Mutually Agreed-Upon Points of Reasonableness to your pager.” Mitty looked up, startled. The Compromise Committee? Yes, now he remembered: He agreed to co-chair it at the last Moderate Conference.
“I’m quite sure that the Points of Reasonableness are, well, reasonable,” Mitty said. “Are we at the county fair yet?”
His campaign aides looked at each other nervously. After an awkward silence, one cleared his throat and spoke up. “Willard, the county fair appearance wrapped up 45 minutes ago. Your joke went over great.”
“Joke?”
“You know, the one where you say, ‘Why did the chicken only partly cross the carnival midway? Because he wanted to stay in the middle of the road — just like all of you, and me as well!’ It took the Noncontroversial Joke Team three days to come up with that zinger!”
Mitty barely remembered saying the joke and the wild applause from average people it elicited. He must have been going through the motions, as his mind seemed to be elsewhere at the time. But where? What was he thinking? The voices around him faded as he gazed inward.
“Vilard Mitté at your service,” the dashing recruit saluted at the French Legionnaire fort in the Sahara Desert. Glowing ash crumbled from the Gitane cigarette dangling off his chapped lips. “I have marched five hundred kilometres through ze burning sands to relieve your position.”
The Commandant eyed him with disgust and disbelief. “Just vous and no one else? I snort with derision! We are surrounded by Saracens and savage desert nomads who desire death more than we desire life. How can one grizzled but handsome world-weary adventurer save us?”
“How? How?” laughed the dashing Vilard Mitté through his five-o’clock shadow. “Avec le intestinal fortitude, mon commandant!”
Comment.
I always thought that story over-rated. Mitt’s the “real deal”:
“ROMNEY & RYAN FOR THE REPUBLIC”
Our nation senses TRIUMPH,
We once feared might never come,
To dispel the clouds of fraud and fear,
Spread like sewage by false MEDIA’s son.
The Pretender was truly their bastard child,
Conceived by the lies they’d spun.
Those with eyes to see and ears to hear,
Pierced the veil false MEDIA made.
As it hid the past and distorted the present,
Of its child who worshipped the shade,
Of the enemies of honor and truth,
And the evil plans they had laid.
Rejoice our souls! Sing out our hearts!
Our champions have appeared!
Their souls were nor sold for power or gold,
And their faith does not bow to fear—
But we now deeply bow in thanks,
That our pleas kind Heaven would hear.
Blessed with a wealth he made himself,
Romney can neither be bought nor bribed.
His running mate is a GENIUS,
And true ladies stand at their side,
Tempered by sorrows and service,
They will fight evil’s vicious tide.
With our Champions and Ladies we call to you,
Our friends and brothers in need.
Be not dismayed at the scope of our task,
Heed not the temptation of greed.
FOR WE SHALL SOON SEE a renewed Freedom Tree,
Though our wallets and spirits may bleed.
ROMNEY & RYAN WIN BIG IN…THREE WEEKS
Keep those contributions, prayers, and your support coming! Our guys don’t want your money to themselves–THEY WANT A RENEWED AMERICA.
Just wanted to let you know I love the style.
Would that he would be the man with the cutlass on his charger riding straight to the enemy. Clarity, brevity, directness. Hope to see that Monday.
Oh, this is supposed to be humor? Uh huh…not.
Seems to fit perfectly.
Nice Dylan reference there, Zombie. It fit in perfectly.
Here’s to a crushing defeat Monday that would make the first debate look like high school.
(Hey – I can have my own Walter Mitty dreams, can’t I?)
Well done! Thurber would be proud.
James Thurber would approve, Zombie. This is a completely worthy takeoff from his original. Bravo.
dafuq?
Brilliant!! Not sure if I agree with all the implications, but brilliantly executed nonetheless.
Well done, Zombie! I enjoy your photo essays so much that I always forget what a good writer you are.
It made me laugh; it made me cry. OK maybe not the second part, but I must admit that this middle of the road stuff is enough to make a good conservative cry.
. . . Zombie, I think I love you.
I guess this is what we get in lieu of drunk blogging the debate.
Reminds me of Dreaming of Babylon.
Ooookay.
I love you, but not this piece. I know, Mitt is all things to all people, flip-flops more than a freshly-landed trout, and so on and so forth. However, I’m working very hard on loving him, and this didn’t help.
On the other hand, as I always confess, I just don’t get satire, so the point of this may have sailed over my head with a mocking snicker.
The point of the piece is not to mock Romney nor to say he’s a flip-flipper but rather to imply that Romney probably is more of a conservative go-getter than he appears on the surface, yet his handlers and his inherent nonconfrontational-ness won’t allow his inner Tea Partier or his inner Reagan come out.
I realize this kind of goes against the new narrative which emerged after the first debate that Romney unsheathed his claws — but really, he only unsheathed his claws on the Romney scale of aggression; even when Romney cranks it up to Romney11, it only registers as, say, a 3 on the Allen West scale, or a 2 on the Churchill scale.
This is not so much a critique of Romney as it is a speculation about his inner self.
Zombie, good story, but I doubt that Romney is more politically conservative on the inside than he shows in public. Instead, I believe that he is a good man and an excellent manager with a good understanding of economics who can be persuaded to follow conservative policy if he comes to believe that the conservative policy is the best option. The problem is Romney probably lacks the Reagan at Reykjavik core conservatism to walk away from a bad compromise. No worse that W, but conservatives will have to lead him away from the temptation to use government to try to fix things. That said, I’m actively and enthusiastically supporting Romney to be our 45th President.
You could be underestimating “Willard Mitty”. He could just be more assertive than Reagan where foreign powers are concerned. I would readily concede that he seems more interested in fixing our economic morass at this juncture, and thank God for that. ABO2012
I got it. Well done, within word limit constraints of course!
I like it and generally do like satire, and yet I’m afraid these are your dreams and my dreams but not his dreams.
… “This is not so much a critique of Romney as it is a speculation about his inner self.”
And as such, right or wrong, it’s worthwhile, not to mention exhilarating
(I mean … whotthell was Thurber’s classic SUPPOSED to be?)
ah man, I almost didn’t read this. Now time for a grateful prayer, you lifted my heart! Thanks.
True Blue Republicans : Classical God-loving Liberalism is the American Way !!
While there is no doubt he’s a flip flopper methinks it is more a result of a pragmatic, thoroughly political nature, and not necessarily a representation of his actual core beliefs. Given the chance I think Romney could repair much of Obama’s damage, and maybe even help buffer America so it has a chance of actually making it to the end of this century.
It’s early yet, but I’m going to call this the best thing I will have read today. Superb!
I don’t have any idea how good he is going to be but I sure hope he is the start of a long turn around with many to follow because this mess we are in now isn’t going to be fixed in just one or two presidential terms.
I never thought I’d see the day when I’ve read election fanfiction.
BUT HERE IT IS.
Is Zombie a hot chick?
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl. Two riders were approaching — the wind began to howl. – Jimi Hendrix
Plagiarism, I say!!!
That’s actually from Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, covered by Hendrix. Just so you know who’s plagiarizing whom.
I have hopes that Willard—someone I’ve admired all my life has that name—will embrace something that vaguely resembles conservative constitutionalism if he is elected. At worst I doubt he would be worse than Obama has been or McCain could have been. I think that he will do better than Bush, who sometimes seemed more big government, big spending than the Democrats.
St. David IV inherited a kingdom in turmoil and ruin. Muslim invaders had conquered some parts of the kingdom. They had demanded and received special privileges in the rest of the Kingdom of Georgia. David IV realized his country was on the brink of disappearing. He wasn’t particularly gifted, but he raised a small army of his countrymen who would be loyal and fight. They retook the land and revoked the special privileges. Far away, Sultan Muhammad bin Muhammad heard of this and summoned all his armies and declared a jihad against the small country of Georgia. St. David IV, King of Georgia, and his armies, though greatly outnumbered by the armies of the Sultan, won a decisive victory. That is why for the last 800 years the country of Georgia is not Muslim.
You never know with history. Sometimes mediocre leaders surprise everyone. I have some hope for Willard. If he does nothing for 4 years that would be an improvement over Obama.
… … “You never know with history.”
It turns on smaller things than the seemingly-overwhelming which our awestruck eyes perceive.
(I’ve been running the causeway lately, going to a client’s shop in Rockwall, wondering how in th’ hell any self-respecting sailboat can get between north and south Ray Hubbard. Impossible!)
I’m always confused by the flip-flop idea. If someone changes their mind and comes around to your (the collective your) way of thinking he’s open minded, far thinking, a visionary. If he changes his mind and goes against you (again the collective you)he’s a flip-flopper, liar and undependable.
Maybe one simply becomes more educated. Sees things differently, has experiences that give one a new perspective. Which changes their mind or shifts their priorities or enlightens them. Oh that the left were as tolerant as they think they are and the right were as understanding as they think they are.
His name may be Willard, but he’s not the rat.
Zombie, you obviously don’t know mormons, mitt would not have said “damn the democrats…”
He would have said “Dang the democrats” or “Darn the democrats”. Even while dreaming