OVERDOSE

Watching the candidates in New Hampshire, I forgot I was recording as I flipped from channel to channel. Here’s a transcript:

Kucinich: One by one, americans are realizing, “My goodness, the elf is right!” And that trend is going to grow and build, as we become less shallow in our interests, and stop worrying about appearances. People will ignore my plastered hair, and hear my concrete ways to solve our problems. Ralph Nader was another nerd who knew what he was talking about and got treated like a smallpox blanket. But this year, things are going to be different.

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Giuliani: You here in Florida are people, just like New Yorkers are people. Or so your lovely police chief, Arlene Gottshalk, I mean Captain Gottshalk, no, of course I mean Chief Gottshalk, was telling me before, earlier, at one of your lovely Florida coastal cafes, where surprisingly you feature a less Caribbean and more Indonesian kind of coffee bean. But I didn’t have any alcohol in mine. Because, of course, I have to be sharp. You never know when the terrorists will strike.

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McCain: My friends, for over five years, I was bound and tortured in a Vietnamese prison. So, until this campaign began, I thought I knew something about misery…

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Clinton: Y’know, I tilt head down shake it back and forth with rueful smile am so proud of the progress we’ve achieved since we entered public life back in Arkansas, and then in the White House, that I’m ready raise head look into the middle distance to go to work for America.

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Obama: Some people… don’t realize… how loonnnng it’s taken… and how far we’ve come… How long it’s taken for us to get here, and how far we had to come to get here… How long it’s taken to get away… from the old battles that those shaggy combative boomers fought, and how far we had to come to forget the benefits they fought for…

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Edwards: I am fighting for the working people of this country and I am fighting all the way to the end. It may take a while for people to join us. Because the moneyed, entrenched corporate interests of this country have our media in a deadly chokehold, and because I am so handsome and rich that you can’t believe I’m doing this. But I am. Deal with it: I’m cute, but I’m also fighting.

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Huckabee: I can remember the gentle kindness of small town folks as we warmly encouraged the pleasant heathens to embrace our Savior. Then there was a soothing sing-a-long… nothing zealously threatening, but just encouraging to the faithful, in an Easy Listening Crusade kind of way.

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Giuliani: I know--how about not doing as the Democrats suggest and surrendering to Al Qaeda and shooting our friends? Why not kick the dog, for people with dogs or a cat? No. I say, how about just winning in Iraq? How about that? How about we just go in there and stay there and clean it up, rinse it off, and reopen the place, like I did in New York? How about nine-elevening the nine-eleven? Some people say, nine-ten nine-ten, but I have the courage and the level of success to say nine eleven.

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Kucinich: You’d expect their suits to be close-fitting and shiny. I guess from science fiction movies or Star Trek. But they just had loose clothing. They did a mind probe, but nothing violent, although they made a big deal about stealing about 20 boxes of herb tea.

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Thompson: So Bruce Willis is saying, don’t make me say yippee kay yay again, and I’m saying, if this green beret dude is screwing up the radar system, why the h**l do we need the snow? But seriously, I’ll be a great leader of the whatever in this country. President.

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Romney: When I ran Massachusetts, I made it a well groomed, efficient sales machine that learned the value of traditional values, while lowering taxes, improving peoples’ lives, inspiring innovation and cherishing, throughout the Commonwealth, our minty fresh breath.

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Obama: But change… never did come easy… and weee… don’t expect it to be easy… The other day, I met with some old, gray, pugnacious, adversarial liberals… and they told me, we can’t make it to the promised land…no, we can’t make it to the promised land…they said, Mr. Obama, you need to talk about what you’re going to do when you’re President. Go talk about what you’re going to do! And I thought about all the people…we’ve brought into this campaign… all you good people who support us… And so, for your sake, I didn’t lose my head. No, I didn’t lose…my patience. No I didn’t. I said, I’ve seen what happens to candidates from the old politics of the past before the new politics of change… I’ve seen what happens to them when they talk about what they’re going to do… we’re not going to be going down that road. We’re headed for a new road, a high road… we’ve found a new path to the promised land.

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Giuliani: ...and, as I understand it, and I don’t want to spend too much time on this, because it’s not something I have time to think about, but as I understand it, the point isn’t whether the cowboys are actually gay…

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Clinton: …says to me Hillary, people think you’re on automatic pilot, that you never worry about yourself pause stare down in front and I realized in that moment head back up clench fists that we need to make the change we’ve been working on for some time. We’ve been working for change. We didn’t just figure it out on the way to some fancy Illinois tailor’s shop but make it clear you’re not referring to any one person and smile…

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Edwards: ...at a six percent rate. And then, we can end corporate welfare as we know it, save 70 billion dollars and actually leave no child behind, instead of adopting an empty slogan and sir, in the sixth row, enough of the sour puss. Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

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Thompson: So I said, if you light me that way, I’m gonna look like a parade balloon, and Clint said, don’t worry. He had seen me in Curly Sue, and apparently was a big fan. But he’s a liberal and I’m not. But Clint, and Arnold, and Troy McClure would all tell you from first-hand knowledge, that I have the goodhearted persistence, and the warm relentlessness of another actor I’ve always admired, who seemed to do all right in the White House, and I’m sure you agree, although I have to admit that I still envy that head o’ hair he had.

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Richardson: … the 5 percent who have truly understood that you can be a sweaty guy and still be the most knowledgeable, the best qualified, both in foreign affairs and as a governor, that not every sweaty politician is Richard Nixon or Huey Long; that I’m the nice sweaty guy, that I sweat because I don’t like the way this country is going.

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McCain: My friends, it’s time for America to realize, in 2000, I got kicked in the guts by the Karl Rove hate machine, just because I stood in his way. And I made a decision that day to say whatever I had to say, and drink whatever Kool Aid I had to drink, in the hopes that we can one day serve a purpose larger than ourselves.

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Huckabee: Of course, in losing all that weight, I was humbled by how far I’d fallen, what I’d done to myself, and frankly, by how much I resembled Humpty Dumpty. So I called Kirstie Alley, and I said, honey, whatever it takes. And she took the name of the Lord in vain, and used some hyphenated words that I hadn’t heard since my uncle Fred injured himself trying to build a porch with a nail gun. But I stayed with it.

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Romney: ...then, I left Boston, and the fog left my eyes, and I realized, I really am a right-winged son of a gun. So, I created the Olympics. The tallest, proudest, most monogamous Olympics in the history of this great planet.

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Kucinich: ...The point is, people in this country are suffering. I have a well-reasoned, logical plan to help our people and improve our standing in the world, and… what? What's the-- this is about the aliens. Let's see if we can get past...

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Richardson: I’m not angry at the citizens of New Hampshire or Iowa. I treasure our freedoms, especially the secret ballot. It just frustrates me that I’m the only one actually qualified to do this, and now I have to go back home, which is bad enough, but then I’m going to spend twelve hours hearing Wolf Blitzer yak about what I did wrong. Or listen to Mathews and Olbermann talk to Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan? Are you freakin’ kidding me?

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Obama: We welcome all people to our new politics of new change. And especially, look at all these young people. They aren’t the people of the past. They are new people, whose lives are changing at the speed of hope. We welcome them all. I said, we welcome them all! Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks…

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Edwards: …finish second in Iowa, a real surprise showing, so we’re delighted and we talk about what this means to the working uninsured and how our voice can help every family that’s suffering in this vicious economic cycle…. and everyone’s still talking about Hillary and Obama, and the one reporter has a question for me, she’s from teen beat, and she wants to know why I’m so McDreamy.

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McCain: My friends, I’ve worked with people on both sides of every aisle, in the Senate, at the movies, even at football games. Let’s continue what President Bush has started, and at the same time, get rid of it and at the same time maintain things as they are, except do better in many general ways. I ask you to reach out, as I reach out to our great land, to elect me so that I can stop talking, because if you think you’re bored, you should take a five minute walk inside my head. I’m used to doing things, taking action. I don’t even like wearing this suit.

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Clinton: Sometimes, I just think this battle is too hard stare directly down at podium and wait for yells of no no, but then I realize… you are with me wherever I go. You know, it’s easy to say “change,” and it’s easy to say “new.” It’s even easy to say “improved,” or “luxury sedan”.. the question is…

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Giuliani: ...where they serve a kind of, I don’t think it’s a guava, maybe a persimmon. Sometimes people are reluctant about all the seeds in a mango, but my grandmother used to say, Rudy, a mango is like a marriage. Okay maybe that’s not the best reference, with my history, heh heh heh, although some people think the nine eleven terrorists should decide our references, and I’d like to kick their anti-American a****s, in a uniquely heroic nine-eleven way.

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Clinton: You don’t know what it’s like searching to the ceiling as though for an answer there you are with the whole world knowing that your husband, the leader of the free world, a man who has never even mentioned cigars in our entire…

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Obama: But in a small humble way, I am Doctor King, and Mahatma Gandhi. I am Walt Whitman and Bishop Tutu. I’m every woman. I’m every river, brook and stream. I’m the way you feel when dinner’s going to be the best it’s ever tasted. I’m the way Teddy Roosevelt felt when he charged up that hill. I’m the tang of the first crisp apple of the fall, or the way that new hat looks when you finally break it in. I’m the hope of the hopeless.

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Clinton: I’m tired of being lectured about set your chin about sacrificing for your country. I believe you can mark my account paid leaning forward to emphasize in that category.

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Obama: Work with me, stay with me, live with me, sleep over my garage, and together we will bring about not only a new kind of politics, but a fundamental change in the way we do politics, a new way, that’s inclusive, unintrusive, respectful and engaging, gentle to the environment, but bold to those who say this is not our time. I shall not tire, I shall not tarry, I shall not bow down to our critics and say what I’ll do in office. This is our time. This is a time for leaders. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the me.