My shared reputation ( with my creation, Bertie Ramsbottom ) as a business verse satirist  seemed to have preceded me; but I was totally unprepared for our stumble into transatlantic politics. Though I probably should have known that a nation versed in Archy and Mehitabel ( a literary cockroach and alley-cat reincarnation of Cleopatra* respectively ) would have little difficulty with an ovine political commentator.

 After an impromptu reading to Washington ‘staffers’, academics and media people of some private  comments I’d scribbled  on the current 1980 Presidential Campaign (Messrs Carter and Reagan)  the then DC Editor of National Public Radio (Steve Reiner) approached me with a request to broadcast some.

These were picked up by NBC, the Press, and led to a series of live readings (National Press Club ,Washington DC, the JF Kennedy School of Politics at Harvard, and other locations around DC, New York and Boston ).I was obliged to write throughout the rest of the campaign and the pieces came together as ” The Making of a President”. Friends here and in the US have apparently dusted them off for subsequent campaigns and suggested I reissue and update them since, candidates’names apart, little else seems to change.

 Certainly, on the key issue of Economics, I am told by distinguished experts that my 1980 ‘Campaign Guide to Economics’ remains    remarkably valid for 2012.

  These are a  few samples, as further proof  that political life also goes round in circles …

( from ” The Making of a President” ) 

*  Don Marquis ‘Archy’s Life of Mehitabel’.

I see it in the waiting eyes of those I pass along the way –
A people longing for the kiss that reawakens night to day !
All of the love and strength is there, to move the world and face the task,
Yet all the sleeping giant needs is someone to inspire and ask !

This is the time, and this the hour, that craves the answer to the need;
But where’s the dreamer with the fire to match the vision with the deed?
For who will cut the bigger tax, or who will build the bigger bomb,
Is not what people such as these would wish to base their choice upon;
It’s who will raise their eyes again, beyond the trivial and mean,
And let them live before the world their promised but forgotten dream.

( from ‘The Making of a President’ )

( from ‘The Making of a President’)

Can someone tell me how we got deflected
From government by those that we Elected?

( from ‘The Making of a President ‘)

Or is there something which more deeply matters,
Some more insidious enemy to dread,
Leaving the flag of tolerance in tatters,
Our conscience atrophied, our doubts unsaid?

When ‘ radical’ means ‘communist’ or ‘traitor’,
And ‘liberal’ is synonymous with ‘wet’,
When ‘successful’ is the sole denominator –

Dear Liberty, are you triumphant yet?

( from ‘The Making of a President’ )

There’s nobody here, was the answer – not for a year of so !
There aren’t many votes in compassion; it’s a question of dollars, you know
And it’s not against any religion, to listen and turn you away,
For we’re having a moral revival as the evidence shows every day.

There’s a born-again, Praise the Lord, Christian at every street corner and turn,
And we’ve proved, when it comes to religion, that Jesus had something to learn !
That “loving your enemy” nonsense was simply a childish mistake !
What we need is more nuclear warheads to burn them alive at the stake !
And to say that the poor and the lowly or the meek will inherit the earth
Is hardly a viable concept – the question is, what are they worth?

So we ask you to wait the New Coming in the way we revivalists seek,
When Jesus will stick to religion, and be less of a liberal freak.

( from ‘The Making of a President’)

Think of me sometimes in your quiet mornings,
Watching the magic of your living sky;
Live joyfully – but listen to my warnings
Of those who’d put you, too, where I now lie.

Watch for the talk of power, the xenophobic,
The cult of war, ‘my country right or wrong’;
The mantle of the brave and patriotic,
Worn for a vote by cynics far too long.

Be vigilant – for that is what I died for –
That you should live your lives where you belong.

( from ‘ The Making of a President’ )

Will you, won’t you; will you, won’t you;
will you, won’t you join the dance?
Just a little something, Teddy, in the present circumstance !
Just a little kiss-and-make-up, for the TV boys to take up,
And I’ll even reconsider restituting Cyrus Vance !
Just a little insky-binsky hug – O.K.
I’ll sack Brezhinzsky !
Anything to let the voters see your smiling countenance !

Just a little teeny-weany something,
Teddy, don’t be meany –
Let’s forget what’s gone before !
Just an itsy-bitsy barter for a little
“I’m for Carter !”
And it’s yours in Nineteen Eighty Four !

Give a little, don’t be hollow! Does it matter who you follow?
Me or Reagan – it’s the same for you !
Let’s get out the press-releases; there’ll be just as many pieces
To be picked up when you’re time is due !

( from ‘ The Making of a President’ )

There’s Yankelovich and Skelly doing Time or on the telly
Crawling out from every profitable stone;
And from Jacksonville to Paris there’s a Gallup or a Harris,
Dissecting every segment to the bone !
And it’s all so scientific (and the profits so terrific),
That the candidates have even got their own !

But the self-respecting voter who’s not in some sample quota,
Feels he’s stigmatised and subject to a sleight;
So the only fair solution is to change the Constitution,
And guarantee we’re sampled as a basic human right !

( from ‘The Making of a President’)

Not since I learned that flowers and trees
Are nature’s wicked machination,
To spread pollution on the breeze
And blame it on the corporation !

But rather I will get me hence
To where the noisome plant dispels,
Beneath the sulphurated smog,
Fragrance of petrochemicals !

And breathe me deep of that sweet air,
That cool ambrosial water taste,
Which dumb ecologists declare
The distillate of nuclear waste.

And there, in concrete bower reclined,
Give thanks for such rare clarity of mind.

( from ‘The Making of A President’ )