A "How to" Guide

The successful politician

by Sam Huntington

If becoming a politician were difficult, if working as a politician was challenging, or even stressful, then we would not find so many people lining up to get into the politician racket. That’s right: racket. Few jobs offer the kinds of benefits we extend to members of Congress. Try to imagine working for corporate America and then telling your boss that you need to make a fact finding trip to Syria —and that he or she has to pay for it. Be sure to inform your boss that you have decided to take your wife along; or, your mistress/secretary/administrative assistant.

This “How to” guide has been developed for the individual who wants to get into the rackets more than he or she wants to gain admission to Heaven: they can’t have both. Nevertheless, there are a few things to remember in your quest for eternal damnation.



First, whether vying for one’s first elective office or reelection for the sixtieth time, it is necessary to hone the art of bribery. This is how politicians get people to support them, even knowing that they send disgusting pictures of themselves to unsuspecting followers on Face Book and Twitter, are liars, perverts, and treasonous scallywags.

The benefit of bribery over having to invent clever rhetoric about your upcoming legislative agenda is that bribery almost always works, while clever rhetoric is often confusing to the average voter, who has the IQ of a watermelon. Plus, bribery allows you to incorporate another clever ploy: feigned compassion. Offering likely voters free stuff provides an opportunity for politicians to also pretend they care about the plight of the common man. Here are a few ideas that have worked in the past:

• Promise to work for an increase in the minimum wage;
• Promise free smart-phones;
• Promise free medical care for full time employees and illegal aliens;
• Promise no increase in taxes for poor folks;
• Promise a car in every garage and a chicken in every pot. Note: if you are running for office in the western states, you can substitute methamphetamines for the chicken;
• Always use the race card, social justice, and class warfare to illustrate how unfair everything is; and
• Promise to work on gun control legislation to stop violent crime in Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia.

Note: promising to work on something does not actually suggest that you will work on it, or that anything meaningful will result from said assurances.

Of course, you cannot use any of these ideas yourself; they are already dog-eared from use and more importantly, some of the people (albeit not all) are getting wise to the ploy. No, it is much better if you develop a new con, or one not used in the past twenty or thirty years. Oh, and before I forget —there is no reason to worry about actually fulfilling any promises because voters have no capacity for long-term memory, which is any period of time longer than five or six minutes.

One area that you can use to great success in the achievement of damnation is the state of the nation’s economy. For example, in a recent survey of economists, over 90% of these astute academicians said that minimum wage laws actually increase the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers. This is not something you want to convey to your constituents, however, because the information will only confuse them. Instead, skew the information so that it sounds like white corporate America is attempting to keep the black man down.

Note: the shrewd politician can substitute the term black man for brown man or red man at will. An expert politician is able to substitute the term woman for man without even having to think about it.

Finally, whenever making a campaign speech, or even something so mundane as a meet and greet in front of a local Kroger’s, try to incorporate as many phony causes as possible within your allotted time. For example, you could assert that mass shootings using nuclear tipped ammunition does significant damage to the environment, along with the long-term consequences to un-aborted children whenever local police fail to properly recover and dispose of all nuclear tipped munitions. And whatever you do, don’t forget to promise to work on legislation to save the whales.