November 18, 2013
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. About two weeks ago we had the presidential election. It was hard thinking about elections and presidents after President Kennedy was shot last November, but there has to be an election every four years for president. It’s necessary like getting booster tetanus shots.
This year Lyndon B. Johnson won in a landslide. Dad said he’d never seen such a lopsided vote. Barry Goldwater, the Republican running, just didn’t appeal to voters or so Dad explained. Since I’m not but thirteen, I’m not old enough to vote for several more years, but if you want to write news the way I do, then you have to pay attention to what’s going on in the world around you. The campaign slogan for LBJ was something easy to remember. “All the way with LBJ.” Short, rhyming words that stick in your head. I did think Goldwater had the best name. Goldwater. That’s kind of a neat name, don’t you think? But a president needs more than a neat name. He needs votes and President Johnson got over sixty percent of those. A landslide in an election, Dad says.
As a newspaper man, Dad likes elections and politics. For one thing, candidates running for office buy lots of advertisement space. If a person doesn’t know about you, he can’t very well vote for you. So the Banner gets plenty of ad money in the months and weeks before an election. But then as a preacher, Dad likes to concentrate more on the elect or God’s people. He won’t talk about elections in church except to say that voters should pray about how to vote and then pray for our leaders no matter whether the one who won was someone you voted for or not.
Dad preaches about prayer a lot. He says being a Christian and not praying is like having electrical outlets and never plugging anything into them.The power’s there, but not being used.
Wes says they don’t have elections up on Jupiter the way we do down here. He says Mr. Jupiter just runs everything. I told Wes that sounded like living in the Soviet Union. But Wes says not. He says Mr. Jupiter is more like Yogi Bear and always promising more. That keeps the Jupiter people happy. He also says Earth people are a lot harder to keep happy and that he doesn’t think even Yogi Bear could do it even if he had a picnic basket for everybody. But you do have to admit, Yogi Bear’s campaign button is cute.
Do you remember any great campaign slogans? We studied one in history. Tippecanoe and Tyler too. I guess rhyming matters in catchy sayings.