POLITICAL CLOWNS

I think it no accident that the greatest politicians have always had a strong sense of humor – Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and now, perhaps, Barbara Emery, should she go through with her plan to run for mayor of the 67,000 residents of Rock Hill, South Carolina. This transplanted New Yorker is not just another political clown. Debra is a professional. She told the Rock Hill Herald, “I am a clown, but I'm also a serious businesswoman,” so it seems possible she might be be open to using the following line on her yard signs, which I offer to her, free of charge; “All politicians are clowns. Why not try a professional?”.

Debra's has a dual persona, “Pickles Da Clown” (above), and “Pickles Da Pirate Clown”, (only available for boy's parties – this is, after all, South Carolina, and obsessed with traditional gender roles). Having never seen her “act” it is difficult for me to say if her sense of humor extends much beyond, “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants”. But according to the manager of the Golden Corral restaurant in nearby Charlotte, N.C., Debra is “The best balloon twister...I have ever seen!” Now I would guess the average restaurant manager has limited experience with balloon twisters, so the compliment must be taken with a shot of seltzer water. However, I suspect trying to get a rezoning ordinance through a dysfunctional city council (or a congress) must be very similar to trying to bent a rubber tube (particularly one ribbed or lubricated) into a wiener dog or a giraffe.

Now, everybody hopes the next pie they get in the kisser, will at least be a fresh one. And greater Rock Hill might benefit from a fresh face to be impacted with the next marange confection. The current mayor is Doug Echols, who has held the office for the past 16 years. And his last challenger, Big Dan Warren, was a member of Doug's First Presbyterian church. Evidently, in Rock Hill, pew are called, but most come from the same pew. Don't any of the Baptists in Rock Hill want to be mayor? Or, maybe even a Catholic? In a monochrome crowd like this, how could a clown be anything but a fresh face, even when coated with grease paint.

There is no word on Pickle/Debra's (above) religious affiliation, since clowns unlike politicians, are notorious for not publicizing their faith. But other than that minor disparity, there is little you can say about a clown that cannot also be said about a politician. Heinrich Heine, the 19^th century German poet, pointed out that “When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on,” which seems to me to be apt stage directions. And consider the political implications of Adam Slinky’s observation, “If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare. But to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown.” Barack Obama might agree with that statement. And it brings to mind the experience of Kenny the Clown, who might once have been mayor of San Francisco, and/or Alameda, California..

His 'straight' name was Kenneth Khan, and his back up careers were as a social worker and a substitute teacher. But the call of the prat fall was always strong for Kenny (above). Then, in 2006, Kenny ran for mayor of Alarmed, across the bay from the Golden Gate. His own mother said he did not stand a chance of winning, and she was right. Kenny won only 7% of the vote, and the support of just 1,300 registered voters. On the encouraging side, the fact that he was a clown did not seem to have lowered his vote total, nor did his arrest for juggling flaming torches while skateboarding. So the following year, when Kenny decided to qualify as a candidate for mayor of Frisco by moving onto a friend's couch inside city limits, the sitting mayor's chief-of-staff had to take him seriously, saying ““I don’t know what’s better -- the fact that he can juggle fire or can smear his opponent from a skateboard, but it sounds like he’s going to fit right in.”

And Kenny did, even overcoming his own families' claustrophobia (fear of clowns). His sister Sylvia called his candidacy “a mockery of our system”, and she did not mean that in a good way. She told the press, “I really have no interest in talking about this and would not like to be contacted to talk about him ever again.” But Kenny persevered with his dyslectic campaign. “People ask me, ‘Do we really want to elect a clown for mayor of the city?’ I say, ‘That’s an excellent question.’” Kenny was determined to collect the 10,000 signatures he needed to appear on the ballot. “Everybody said it couldn’t be done,” he optimistically told the press. “Not only do I think I can, I will. I’m going to.” Unfortunately, Kenny did not. And he won only 3 votes as a write-in candidate - not a good omen for Pickle's DA Clown's political future. But if you look carefully, you might see a faint ray of sanity – ah, hope – a few thousand miles away on the North Sea coast of England, in the tiny Yorkshire fishing village of Whitey

Parenthetically, Whitey’s previous fame rested on it being the spot Bran Stoker chose to wash ashore the villain in his novel “Dracula” (he first found the name while rooting about in the Transylvania history section of the Whitey Public Library). But today, there can be little doubt the place has become famous for one of its elected representatives, Simon Parkes, Labor Party. And while it is true that Simon is only one of the 19 councilors representing the 13,000 citizens of Whitey, and he is just another politician who has admitted to having an extramarital affair, Simon Parkes is the only politician on earth (that I know of), who has admitted to having fathered a child in an extraterrestrial extramarital affair.

Simon calls his hot green alien momma, Cat Queen. She is 9 feet tall, has eight fingers and a big green head and wears a monk's robe. He spends hours every day, drawing her image, Ala Indiana lineman Roy Neary in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". But Simon's description of their quarterly trysts are told with discretion. "What will happen is that we will hold hands, and I will say ‘I'm ready’ and then the technology I don't understand will take us up to a craft orbiting the earth.” Simon calls the product of their....whatever it is – I am tempted to say, delusion – Zarka. That is, evidently a “Mantid” male name, since Simon describes their hybrid offspring as a boy, a label which strikes at once as both optimistic and depressing.

Simon admits that his earthly wife (and mother of his three earth children) is “very unhappy, clearly” about his extraterrestrial passion play, “but it is not on a human level, so I don't see it as wrong,” he says. Simon assures his constituents that his alien sex romps have not interfered with his elected duties. “I am not taken during meetings. These creatures...don't have an agenda,” But do they have maternity leave? Simon insists, “When I was elected I'd already gone public...Nobody has asked me to resign because this is a private matter...I'm more interested in fixing someone's leaking roof or potholes.” But in typical British understatement, he added, “People don't want me to talk about aliens.” And by “people” I assume Simon means earthlings, such as his wife. And that brings us to the ray of hope.

With all do respect to Councilman Parkes, he does not qualify as a political clown. “Pickles da” and “Kenney the”are political clowns, like John McCain and Joe Biden, and they know its an act. While Simon Parkes, like Louie Gomert and Ted Cruz from Texas or Michele Bachman and even John Boehner, seem unaware the distant spot of light illuminating their performance is controlled by IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Employees, and not God Almighty. Professional political clowns may drive you to tears, but they are not going to burn down an orphanage to do it. Real political clowns may tell you to be afraid of aliens, but they are not going to suggest the aliens not be treated like human beings.

Its the difference between sticking out your tongue at those who disagree with you, and talking with your tongue planted firmly in your own cheek.

- 30 -

KING OF THE HILL

I find it curious that “King of the Hill” is such a popular game in Houston, Texas, since there are no hills there. In fact, because of all the oil, gas and water pumped out of the clays underfoot by Texans building their personal hills, most of the town has subsided 10 feet or more. Consider that archetypal post war Houston hill climber – Frank Wesley Sharp (above, left). He was not part of the  circle of wealthy, power hungry men who ran Houston. As one biographer said of the amiable salesman, “He was in many ways...a loner...He just wanted to win whatever race he was in at the time.” At forty Frank first experimented in the northwest suburbs with a development on the cheap. Like the rest of Houston, his 1946 Oak Forest tract had no zoning laws. It did have paved streets and water, sewage, gas and power lines - even a golf course - but Frank left most of the buildings to independent contractors. Having climbed that hill, however, Frank was now compelled to find another, higher, mountain to stand upon.

On July 3, 1954, Houston newspapers screamed, “Sharp Announces Houston's Biggest Home Project.” Humbly titled Sharpstown, Frank's pièce de résistance was to be a $200 million 4,000 acre city within the city, with 15,000 homes, an indoor air conditioned shopping mall, nine churches, seven parks, two hospitals, two high schools, a golf course, a twin drive-in theater, three nursing homes, a 750 acre industrial park, six auto dealerships, even a Jesuit College Prep school And running through the center of Sharpstown, was a 300 yard wide strip Frank “donated” to the city, for a brand new freeway aimed at downtown Houston, 9 miles to the northeast. It was a fully planned if not a fully funded community which only required a $3 million investment from Frank.

And most important of all,. adjacent to the Sharpstown Center Mall, at 7500 Bellaire Boulevard, Frank built a ten story office tower that housed the Sharpstown State Bank, which was Frank Sharp's real money-making scheme. You see, in 1962 (when the mall opened), as in 1867 when Credit Moblier was chosen as the general contractor for the transcontinental railroad, as in 1792, when speculators promoted the swampy Yazoo Lands, Frank Sharp knew that making “real” money had nothing to do with buying low or selling high. In a capitalist system, the greatest profit is always in buying politicians, whose price and morals, are usually cheap.

It was bad luck that Frank Sharp did not really get rich from Sharpstown. One of his partners died in a hunting accident midway through the multi-year construction, and the banks asked for another $5 million to refinance his loan. Frank found new partners to carry him over, but the interest rates they demanded were so high, Frank had to promise not to sue them for usury. Two years later Frank was able to buy himself out of that crushing deal with $3 million in cash, which he borrowed from George and Herman Brown. Of course he also had to agree to grant their company, Brown and Root, exclusive contracts for all future construction in Sharpstown. The thing about sharks, that sharks often forget, is that sharks eat sharks.

Still, by the late 1960's, Frank could finally see the summit, and there was just one last precipice to overcome. His Sharptown Bank had too low a ratio of deposits to loans to qualify as a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the private-slash-government agency that guaranties deposits in member banks. And without that guarantee, Frank's Sharptown Bank could not attract the institutional investors and depositors he needed to firmly establish the foundation of his hill. In July of 1969 Frank met privately with Texas Governor Preston Smith (above) in a Houston hotel suite to discuss the problem. And, what do you know - darn - if they didn't came up with a solution.

At the time Governor Smith (above, left center) was locked in a messy Democratic primary fight, but the winner would go on to an almost default victory in the general election, since Texas had been overwhelmingly Democratic for over a hundred years. But whatever he was going to do, Smith had to do it quickly even if re-elected, because Texas limited its governors to two year terms. So later that summer Smith met with his Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, who presided over the State Senate, Speaker of the House Gus Mutscher (above, left), his aide Rush McGinty,  the Speaker's close ally Representative Tommy Shannon, Attorney General Waggoner Carr (above right), State Insurance Commissioner John Osorio, and a member of the State Banking Board, Elmer Baum, who was also Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Smith informed his cabal of his three part plan, suggested by Frank Sharp's problem.

Step one required each member to apply for a loan from the Sharpstown Bank, which Frank would personally approve. Cabal members would use those funds to buy stock in another of Frank Sharp's financial properties, his National Bankers Life Insurance Company, now based in Dallas. Step two required the legislature to create a Texas Deposit Insurance program, which would be much more lenient in their deposit to loan ratio's than the FDIC. This would put the Texas taxpayers on the hook should the Sharpstown bank go under, but nobody expected that would happen, since the guarantee would attract the large institutional investment Frank Sharp needed to ensure the bank's future.

Step three would see Frank use his new investors to encourage his customers and associates, like the Strake Jesuit College, to buy shares of National Bankers Life as it went up, from $20 to $26 a share. Finally, the cabal members would cash out their stock, pocketing the profits. It seemed a fool proof plan, particularly when handled by astute politicians who had almost complete control of the Texas Legislature. And all went according to plan. To a point.

Frank approved $600,000 in loans for the cabal members, which they used to buy Bankers Life stock. The Texas Deposit Insurance Program was hurriedly passed in the final late night hours of a special session. But then to the surprise of many in the cabal, Attorney General Carr issued a public letter warning that Texas taxpayers would be put at risk insuring banks too weak to qualify for the FDIC program. That gave Governor Smith an excuse to veto the bill, which he did. Of course Smith and most of the cabal sold their Banker's Life stock before he signed the veto. Preston Smith was not stupid.

All told, the cabal members made about $250,000 in profits. Governor Smith alone made a $62,500 profit . The head of the Texas House Appropriations, Bill Heatly, made just under $50,000. Rush McGinty, made about $45,000 . And Rep. Tommy Shannon profited $37,000. But that left Frank's other customers who had trusted and believed in him, like the Jesuits, holding the Bankers Life stock on its way down. The Jesuit college lost $6 million dollars after the Governor's veto was announced. And being sore losers in this King of the Hill game, they called the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Two years later, on January 18^th, 1971, Governor Smith was inaugurated to his second term. But the Austin celebratory parade was disrupted by angry crowds, cursing and throwing bottles at the floats and marching bands. That very afternoon in Dallas, the U.S. Department of Justice had publicly indicted several members of the cabal, and Governor Smith had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The public reaction was immediate and extremely angry. By the end of the month the SEC had seized the Sharpstown State Bank. Examining its books they were unable to locate $16 million. And even though the bank was not a member, the FDIC paid the private depositors in full, up to $20, 000. By the end of February the National Bankers Life Insurance Corporation had also been seized. Civil suits were flying, and two dozen elected and appointed state officials were charged in Federal and State courts with crimes. For a time it looked like people were actually going to jail. .

The February 1972 trial of Speaker Mutscher, Rep Shannon and aide Rush McGinty was moved to Abilene, Kansas because of pretrial publicity in Austin. And on March 15^th , after two hours of deliberation, a jury found them guilty. The very next day Federal Judge J. Neil Daniel sentenced them each to five years...probation. Gus Mutscher had his conviction thrown out on appeal, and was later elected as a judge for Washington County, Texas. At his trial in Dallas, Frank W. Sharp was sentenced to three years...probation. He also paid a fine. Of $5,000, or about 1/15 of the profit made on Sharpstown Bank Scandal. In the next election cycle, about half of the state legislature was replaced, but the Democrats retained control of both houses.

In the end only one politician actually went to jail - Walter Knapp Jr (above), a four term Democratic Representative from Amarillo. He was not involved in any part of the cabal, but in the attendant publicity he was convicted of stealing $1,200 worth of postage stamps, which he traded for a new pickup truck. For that crime Walter Knapp was sentenced to four years in prison, and there was no probation for him. He served a year, before an appeals court judge ordered a new trial, and released Walter on bail. In March of 1974, his wife Nancy, divorced him, and over Thanksgiving that year she remarried. In December Walter confronted Nancy on an Amarillo street and shot her in the head. When police confronted him, Walter shot himself.

Governor Smith (above) remained an uninidicted conspirator, and although he tried to run for re-election, he was eliminated in the Democratic primary. In 1974 he started his own bank in Lubbock, Texas, and in 1986 transferred to Great Western Mortgage Company. He died in 2003.

Frank Welsey Sharp never shot anybody. He never stole $1,200 in petty cash. He never committed a violent crime in his life, unless you consider bankrupting families and emptying college funds a violent act. .In his final years, he liked to wander the mall he had built, talking to shoppers and business owners. It was all that was left of the hill he had named after himself and then clambered atop  Frank died peacefully, at 87 years of age, in 1993. And in Houston, a new generation is still playing King of the Hill, which still remains, a game of winner-take-all by any means possible..

- 30 -

1828 - UNFORTUNATLY

I hate to call her “The Unfortunate Rachel”, but she was. Her troubles started in the fall of 1779 when her father John Donelson, dragged his family along with about 600 men, women and children through the 12 mile long Cumberland Gap to an outpost on the headwaters of the Tennessee River. From here most of the younger men set out cross country, aiming for the Cumberland River. Once there, they bought land from the local Shawnee Indians at the head of a trail called the Natchez Trace. By winter they were warm and snug in their new fort, which they called Nashboro (sic). Unfortunately, on December 22 of that same year, John loaded 12 year old Rachel, her ten siblings and her mother, along with 300 other old men, women and children onto 30 flatboats and canoes, and began floating down the Tennessee River. John Donelson thought the women and children would have an easier time on the water. Boy, was he wrong.

Almost immediately 28 people contracted small pox and had to be isolated in a single boat. Then Indians attacked, killing all the small pox victims. What was left of the expedition repeatedly ran aground, some of the boats capsized, and the women were required to help steer the ungainly rafts, while Indians kept shooting the helmsmen. Eventually, the desperate band reached the Ohio River, at Paduca, Kentucky. They then laboriously poled ten miles against the current to the mouth of the Cumberland River, and then 160 miles up that stream until their joyful reunion on April 24, 1780, with their men at the new fort, now called Nashville. Of the roughly 300 women and children who began that four month 1,500 mile river voyage, 33 had died and nine arrived wounded – that was a better than 10% causality rate  They were literally decimated. It was a tough trip.

Eventually the families each established their own little fortresses in the wilderness. Unfortunately, five years later, on March 1, 1785, the 18 year old Rachel Donelson married a 28 year old land speculator named Captain Lewis Robards. It was to prove a tough marriage. He owned land 150 miles to the northeast, around Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and the couple lived there with his widowed mother, Elizabeth, who took in boarders. Then, in the fall of 1788, Lewis returned home from a business trip to find Rachel on the porch talking with a boarder, a traveling lawyer named Peyton Short. According to another boarder, Judge John Overton, Lewis accused Short of flirting with his wife, and a heated argument developed. Elizabeth Robards was drawn outside where she took Mr. Short's side. Lewis then accused his wife of encouraging Short. When his mother supported Rachel, Lewis ordered his wife to leave and never show her face in “his” house again.

So the unfortunate Rachel returned to Nashville, where she met another young lawyer recently arrived at her own widowed mother's boarding house. His name was Andrew Jackson. The next year, Lewis arrived to patch up things with Rachel, but quickly decided Andrew Jackson was now flirting with his wife. And maybe he was. Anyway, Lewis outweighed Jackson by about 50 pounds, and threatened to beat him up. Instead Jackson offered to meet him “on the field of honor”, but then moved to a nearby trading post. However Lewis's behavior, and his new threat to “haunt” Rachel, convinced her that unfortunately Lewis was still crazy. And as soon as Lewis had returned to Harrodsburg for a quick business trip, Rachel took a boat up the Cumberland, then down the Ohio to the Mississippi River. She didn't stop until she got to Natchez..

The following year, an announcement appeared in a Kentucky newspaper saying that through the good offices of his brother-in-law Major John Jouett, Lewis Robards had been granted a divorce by the Kentucky Legislature. Reading this Jackson immediately took off for Natchez, where in the summer of 1791, he and Rachel were married.  Unfortunately, they did not live happily ever after. Because Rachel was unfortunate - remember? Even her divorce was going to be tough.

It was not until 1793 that the Jackson's, living as man and wife on land Jackson had purchased ten miles outside of Nashville, learned the newspaper story had been incorrect. Kentucky had not granted Lewis Robards a divorce from Rachel. All that Lewis' brother-in-law had got him was a bill authorized him to seek a divorce in court. He had quickly started that process, but legally, he and Rachel were still married, making Rachel a bigamist. But then so was Lewis Robards, since in December of 1792 he had married Miss Hannah Winn. The Robards-Donaldson nuptials would not be legally ended until a year later – as of September 27, 1793.

Now, Rachel (above) was a devout Presbyterian, and would never have lived with a man without believing she was in a sanctified marriage. After all, marriage was usually the only financial security a woman had in 18^th century America. And as soon as the Jacksons could verify the divorce, they remarried, in January of 1794, in Nashville. After that, they settled down to live happily ever after - not. Because Rachel's unfortunate divorce was going to be very, very tough, especially on Andrew.

It is figured that Andrew Jackson fought at least 13 duels to “defend his wife's honor”. It wasn't that people did not understand the confusion distance and shoddy records could generate along the frontier. But it was common knowledge that if you were ticked off with the hot headed Jackson, just mentioning Rachel would instantly get his goat. In 1806 Tennessee Governor John Sevier and head of the state militia Andrew Jackson got into an argument in front of the courthouse in Knoxville. Jackson began to list his extensive record of service, and when Sevier got feed up he interjected, “I know of no great service you have rendered, except taking a trip with another man's wife.”

The duel with Governor Sevier ended with both men shooting into the air. But there was also the 1806 duel with Charles Dickinson, which started as an argument over a horse race, but came to a head when Dickinson called Rachel a bigamist. Dickinson was a well known duelist, a crack shot, who proceeded to lodge a musket ball in Jackson's lung. But Jackson's single minded fury kept him on his feet, and he put a bullet in Dickerson’s chest, killing him. Which is why Charles Hammond decided to bring up the tardy divorce as well.

Charles Hammond (above) had been a Virginia lawyer, who had even argued before the Supreme Court - where he earned Chief Justice John Marshall's praise for his losing arguments. In 1826 Charles moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and bought the failing Gazette weekly newspaper. He immediately turned it into a successful daily. Daniel Webster called him “the greatest genius who ever wielded the political pen” for his editorials. And in March of that year, Hammond produced a classic editorial about Presidential candidate Andrew Jackson, asking, “Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?”

On March 23, 1827, Hammond returned to the subject, informing the 15,000 residence of Cincinnati that “In the summer of 1790, General Jackson prevailed upon the wife of Lewis Robards of Mercer County Kentucky, to desert her husband and live with himself in the character of a wife.” It wasn't true, at least not entirely. After all, Lewis had ordered the unfortunate Rachel out of his house, before she even met Jackson. In fact they never would have met, except Lewis was behaving like a jerk. But then the purpose of Hammond's insults was not to prove that Rachel had no honor, but to prove that Jackson had no sense - that he was a hot head, not to be trusted with the nation.

Jackson (above) did challenge Hammond to a duel after the first insult, but Hammond refused to even respond. And then Jackson was told that Hammond had met that summer with Henry Clay, of “the corrupt bargain” fame, and that it was Clay who had encouraged Hammond to write about Rachel. So Jackson challenged Clay, who answered by insisting he had never mentioned Rachel to Hammond. But Old Hickory decided he didn't believe Clay. From that day forward Jackson was “determined to...lay the perfidy, meanness and wickedness of Clay, naked before the American people...he is certainly the basest, meanest scoundrel that ever disgraced the image of God...nothing is too low for him to condescend to.”

In public Jackson remained calm, so Hammond decided to step up the attacks. He wouldn't fight to defend his wife's honor, then maybe he would reveal his real self to defend his mother. Wrote Hammond now, “General Jackson’s mother was a “COMMON PROSTITUTE” brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which number General JACKSON IS ONE!!!”

In reality, the only one who was prostituting himself in this affair, was Hammond.

- 30 -

NIXON AND TUCK

“'I've made a lot of candidates look foolish, usually with a lot of help from the candidates themselves.”

His name is legend, so secure that in his mid-eighties his business card carries merely his name and the definition of the phrase Political Prank: “a political activity, characterized by humor, devised to unmask, ventilate, bring to light, debunk, hold up to view, etc., the comical, ludicrous, or ridiculous, etc., incongruities, follies, abuses, and stupidities, etc., esp. of a candidate for office.” His sobriquet's, none self applied, include the Democratic harlequin, the Democrat Pixie, the merry trickster, the leprechaun, Richard Nixon's doppelganger, a Gaelic Father Christmas without beard and who gives the impression that he sends his clothes to the cleaners for rumpling, and most accurately, the self appointed Inspector Javert to Richard Nixon's Jean Valjean. It was Dick Tuck who tormented the central years of Richard Nixon's life. It was Dick Tuck who was blamed by Nixon's closest advisers, for the scandal that brought down their President. And it was Dick Tuck who always understood, that nobody pays to see the picador, except the matador.

“I think newspapers should stop publishing inaccurate polls until we do away with the secret ballot. Or run headlines: Poll Right--Election Off 4%.”

Dick Tuck spent the Second World War in the Pacific, dismantling bombs, and his post war career, planting them. In 1950, as a GI Bill student at U.C. Santa Barbara, Dick Tuck was working for Democratic Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, in her run for the U.S. Senate. According to Dick, an absent minded professor asked him “out of the blue” to act as campus “advance man” for the Republican candidate, Congressman Nixon. Tuck knew almost nothing about his soon-to-be nemesis, but instantly seeing the potential for humor, Dick accepted the job.

“I would have trouble convincing anybody that anything I've ever done is serious--except Richard Nixon.”

He rented the largest auditorium the Young Republican's budget would allow, and then invited only about 40 young Republicans. Introducing the Congressman to the empty cavern, Tuck rambled on for twenty minutes, before suggesting Nixon would now speak on the International Monetary Fund. Taking the microphone, Nixon was nonplussed. After stumbling through a short address and as soon as the last sad clap echoed through the empty auditorium, Nixon asked Tuck his name, and then told him, “Dick Tuck, you've made your last advance.” Luckily for future generations, that proved not to be true. Jokes aside, Nixon won the election.

“I don't consider the Boston Tea Party a prank. Rather, it was a staged event with an important political message.”

The two did not meet again until 1956, when Nixon was repeating as President Eisenhower's running mate. At the Republican convention, Tuck learned the San Francisco Department of Public Works sent their garbage trucks down Geneva Avenue on their way to the Junipero Serra Landfill. So Dick Tuck bought advertising space on each of those trucks, So when the Republicans gazed out from their convention held in the Cow Palace, which was bordered by Geneva Avenue, they saw a endless stream of garbage trucks each carrying signs that said simply, “Dump Nixon.” It did not turn the election around, but it certainly bothered Nixon.

“The fact that your grandfather was a horse thief, that's not relevant.”

As the campaign progressed, Tuck would pose as a Republican operative, and convince bandleaders hired to provide music for campaign stops that Nixon's walk-on should be his favorite song - “Mack The Knife”. Needless to say, it was not Nixon's favorite song. Posing as a fire marshal to the local press, Tuck would low ball turnout estimates for Republican rallies. Wearing a stolen conductor's cap, Tuck signaled the engineer to pull out of whistle stop, while Nixon (above) was still speaking from the rear of the last car. And then there was famous “Chinatown Caper” - so legendary it is now unclear if it occurred in 1956 or 1962, when Nixon was running for Governor of California. The story is ascribed to both campaigns, but it was in 1956 that a newspaper first broke the story that Richard Nixon's brother Donald had received an unsecured $205,000 loan from Hughs Tool Company, owned by Howard Hughs. Tuck thought it was a great story, but the national press was not talking about it. So Tuck decided to fix that.

“'I've never had a job, and it's too late now.”

At a stop in Los Angeles' small Chinatown, Vice President Richard Nixon (and his brother Donald) arrived to find the backdrop was a large hand painted sign that was assumed to read in Chinese characters “Welcome”.  But as Richard began speaking, an elderly Chinese dignitary whispered to Donald that the sign actually said, “What about the Hughes Loan?” Dick Tuck had, of course, paid for the substitution, although how he got up it put at the rally was never explained. In any case, Donald Nixon abruptly bolted from his seat and ripped the sign to shreds, in full view of the news cameras. Now the national press had to explain the details of the loan. It made no difference in the election because Eisenhower (and Nixon) won. But Nixon was beginning to develop a complex about Dick Tuck, and ordered his staff, “Keep that man away from me.”

''I always used to hate the word 'prank'.”

In explaining how his pranks differed from those of the Republicans who followed him - Donald Segretti for Nixon, Lee Atwater for Bush Sr., and Karl Rove for Bush Jr - Tuck explained, “It's just the difference between altering fortune cookies to make a candidate look funny and altering State Department cables to make it look as if a former President were a murderer.” The fortune cookie line referred to 1958, when Dick Tuck was working for California Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Pat Brown (Governor Jerry Brown's father), running against Republican Senator William Knowland. At a fund-raising dinner for Knowland, Tuck somehow managed to have all the fortunes in the fortune cookies read, “Knowland for Premier of Formosa”. It was a prank, not meant to disenfranchise Republican voters, smear a candidate, or to lock conservatives out of the electoral process.

Pat Brown won that election, but that wasn't the point of the joke.

In the 1960 Presidential election, the turning point was the televised debates between Kennedy and Nixon. The morning after the first debate, the pundits were obsessed with who had won, and whether Nixon looked like he needed a shave. Then a woman wearing Nixon buttons expectantly embraced Nixon as he stepped off an airplane. She loudly exclaimed, “Don't worry, son! He beat you last night, but you'll get him next time.” She, of course worked for Dick Tuck. Nixon lost that election, by a hair. And in 1962, he also lost the election for Governor of California, petulantly telling the press, and Dick Tuck, that they would no longer have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore.

“What kind of a person would answer a pollster's questions? And tell the truth yet?”

In 1966 Dick Tuck staged a homage to Richard Nixon, by running himself for run for a seat in the California State Senate. He made that announcement from Glendale's sprawling Forest Lawn Cemetery, explaining to curious reporters that just because people had died, did not mean they had lost their right to vote. His campaign slogan was, “The Job Needs Tuck, Tuck Needs the Job.” Richard Nixon immediately sent Tuck a congratulatory telegram, and offered to campaign for him. Tuck responded by inviting Nixon to a debate, and even offered to shave for it. On election night, Dick Tuck fell behind early, but urged the press to “wait until the dead vote comes in.” The dead vote never showed up, and when it was clear Tuck had come in third out of field of eight Democrats, Tuck held a Nixonian press conference, telling the cameras, “The people have spoken. The bastards.” It proved to be the most famous thing Dick Tuck ever said.

On Ronald Reagan: “Anybody who takes off the month of August can't be all bad.''

In 1967, Tuck (above) went to Gary, Indiana, to run the mayoral campaign of Richard Hatcher. The local political machine had a history of stealing elections by sabotaging voting machines, but Dick Tuck solved that 

problem in typical Dick Tuck fashion. He formed a flying squad of teenage pin ball enthusiasts, and trained them to repair the voting machines. The instant one broke, a teenager showed up to get it running again. Richard Hatcher became the first African-American mayor of a major American city.

“I think air conditioning ruined Washington. Before it, during those muggy summers, everybody went home.”

In 1968, Dick Tuck became an adviser on Senator Robert Kennedy's Presidential campaign, and was occasionally seen walking Freckles, the Kennedy's English Spaniel. Teased by reporters, Tuck responded, “To you, this is just a dog, but to me it's an ambassadorship.” But on that fateful night of June 6^th, after the California primary, Dick Tuck was just behind Senator Kennedy when he was shot, and tended to the dieing candidate. And that was the end of Dick Tuck's political activities that year. But not the end of his influence.

 

"I'm leaving politics and going into entertainment. Maybe I'm not changing--maybe politics is changing. It's not the entertainment that it once was.”

Later in 1968, the Nixon Presidential campaign in New York City received an order for several thousand buttons which repeated the phrase, “Nixon's The One”, in everything from Chinese, to Italian, Gaelic, Hebrew, and even Lithuanian. They were to be handed out at various ethnic rallies in the city. But so paranoid had Nixon become about the antics of Dick Tuck, that they were destroyed, just in case he had gotten to them. (He had not.) It was later alleged that Dick Tuck hired pregnant women to wander about at Nixon rallies wearing “Nixon's the One”buttons, but that may just be another legend. However it is clear that Nixon had begun to believe those legends, often lecturing his staff about some prank Tuck had or supposedly had, pulled on the Nixon campaign. Nixon began haranguing his staff, “Dick Tuck did that to me. Let's get out what Dick Tuck did!"

“I couldn’t exist in this environment. The problem is there will be no surprises. And there aren’t any independents anymore.”

Dick Tuck's name can be heard repeatedly on the Watergate tapes, always spoken of the way Batman must speak of The Joker, during down times in the Bat Cave. On March 13, 1973, Nixon can be heard on the Watergate tapes complaining about the ineffectualness of his own operative: “Shows what a master Dick Tuck is ... (Donald) Segretti's hasn't been a bit similar.” Later in 1973, Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. (Bob) Halderman (below, left), spotted Dick Tuck in the hall during a break in the Senate Select Committee hearings on Watergate. He approached the Democratic leprechaun and accused him, “You started all of this.” To which Dick Tuck responded, “Yea, Bob. But you guys ran it into the ground.”

“The people have spoken. The bastards.”

- 30 -