The Late Norman Mailer for President

Read more tributes to Norman Mailer on HuffPost here.

Norman Mailer ran for mayor of New York City in 1969. Well, sort of ran for sort of mayor. He was going to share it, somehow, with Jimmy Breslin, or something, like a cab from Costello's to the Lion's Head, and they never made it past the Democratic primary.

But think about this: What if Norman Mailer had won?

(Wait, first think about this: In 1969, the highest office the non-politician with the biggest ego in the United States could aspire to was mayor. Running for president? That was something you either did seriously - something for generals or scions of dynasties, or by working your way over a lifetime up from ward healer - or something you did as a joke - if you were Pat Paulson or Pogo.)

(Now anyone can run for president. If you're a Republican, all you need is hostility and a suit. Have you seen them debate? The gravitas on that stage could be dispersed with Febreze.)

Where was I? Oh, right, in 1969 - the year another American walked on the fugging moon -- Norman Mailer - the White Negro, the founder of the Village Voice, the glorious doofus who called his penis "Avenger," the guy who wrote The Naked and the Dead -- just wanted to be mayor.

Was he high? (Well of course he was.) But what was he thinking? It was uncharacteristically modest, for a man who'd already called a collection of ephemera The Presidential Papers.

Did he imagine it was a stepping-stone to the White House? Hadn't he heard about what happened to Dewitt Clinton? (Probably not. I know I haven't.)

Or what if he was just ahead of his time? What if he saw, in some degraded age to come, in a field of Fred Thompsons and Mitt Romneys, that we'd be so desperate for national leadership that the Mayor of New York would start looking pretty good?

If Mailer had become Mayor, why not President? A decorated veteran, pro-life, loved by his children and a plurality of ex-wives (not one of them a cousin), wealthy - some of it from public speaking -- wary of homosexuals, not a cross-dresser, not a Mormon, old and vaguely familiar from TV.

Would it go over in the South? He could go for the NASCAR dads by playing up the domestic abuse.

Think of him as Ron Paul on acid. Except Ron Paul is kind of like Ron Paul on acid.

Right now, Rudy Giuliani, a cancerous cackling hunchback, is a leading contender for his party's nomination, because he was Mayor of New York during a disaster. (And therefore has no more World Trade Centers to lose.)

Right now, Michael Bloomberg, a kind of creeping nonentity, the sort of moneyed nobody who would traditionally buy himself the ambassadorship to the Virgin Islands, endow an ugly building at a safety school, and die of a heart attack raping his niece at the Waldorf, is on the cover of Newsweek as the race's "Billion Dollar Wild Card."

Based on what? Because he's a mayor, and he hasn't lost a building yet? Neither has Mayor McCheese.

What would Mailer's negatives be? That he's dangerous? That he's crazy? You mean as opposed to John McCain?

That he's dead? You mean as opposed to Fred Thompson?

Viable? If he could keep his mouth shut, he'd be the Republican frontrunner.

But then again, so would Pogo.

Read more tributes to Norman Mailer on HuffPost here.

Comments

[TRYKER]

Chris, that was a great post. Especially liked the Fabreeze cleverness.

[MrCoffeeCup]

Who's Norman Mailer? Didn't he marry Marilyn Monroe? Now that would have been a First Lady!

If that had happened they would be no gay agenda for men! Women? Well it would be understandable!

Why such interest in a comic book writer?
Vice President: Catherine the Great(Harris)FL.
Sec. of State: Tony Saprano
Sec. of Defense: Joe Biden
Sec. Homeland Security: Hulk Hogan
Sec. Health, EDU, Welfare: Don Knotts
Sec. of the Interior: Rue Paul
Dept of Education: Bill Cosby
Dept of Labor: Donald (your Fired) Trump
Director of Intelligence(CIA,NSC,NSA,DOD)Dog Dwayne Chapman
Dir. FBI: MS. Brittney Spears!
Dir. of Commerce: Paris Hilton

[christonabike]

Chris- Norman Mailer as Mayor of NY, Pres.? It would have been like getting married in Vegas during a monumental bender.

[ryanchrisxp]

Holy Crap! Man, you crack me up every time. The "fugging moon" comment is priceless. Well, maybe not priceless - but definitely worth an extra 4 cents of residual per DVD sale.

[horseface]

Norman Mailer was Norman Mailer: you don't know who people are these days. Public figures (celebrities, politicians, preachers, actors, writers) are all false fronts for corporations, ideologies, causes, and hidden dollars.

He took who he was and ran with it; this feminist admired him.

[Steamboater]

Mailer had a reputation for being an ardent mysoginist. He never would get elected today and thankfully was never elected to office when younger. That doesn't take away from him as writer however. Gladly, he stuck to writing.

[nomorebombs]

norman just rolled one for all....

[calpubserv]

Say what you will about Mailer"and there"s a lot to say"but his article "White Man, Unburdened" was one of the most lucid early commentaries on our current national predicament..

And Tough Guys don"t Dance is the coolest title any novel ever had.

[IncredulousGeezer]

Ah, Chris what you fashion is redolent of an earlier day; Norman might have written it himself on a sober morning.

Conspicuously missing, however, was his public tangles with the likes of Wm. F. Buckley and Gore Vidal. Crazy, all of them, in their inflated egos and peculiar views of the human condition. Say what you wish of Norman, though, he was, despite, all the insults exchanged, always the most genuine and likeable of the bunch.

[Kundera]

Mailer"s attention was captured by Jack Abbott, a violent convict and self-declared Communist who began writing Mailer long "existential" letters about life in prison. Mailer loved them. He helped Abbott have them published, first in The New York Review of Books and then as a book, called In the Belly of the Beast (1981). In his introduction, Mailer described Abbott as "an intellectual, a radical, a potential leader, a man obsessed with a vision of more elevated human relations in a better world that revolution could forge." It seems clear that Mailer"s interest helped to expedite Abbott"s release from prison: "Culture," Mailer declared at one point, "is worth a little risk." Abbott had scarcely set foot in New York when he stabbed and killed Richard Adan, a twenty-two-year-old Cuban-American waiter. Mailer testified on Abbott"s behalf at the ensuing murder trial. Asked about Adan"s family at a press conference following his testimony, Mailer said: "I"m willing to gamble with a portion of society to save this man"s talent." A reporter from The New York Post then asked "who he was willing to see sacrificed. Waiters? Cubans?" Questions to which Mailer had no response but bluster: "What are you all feeling so righteous about, may I ask?" Clearly, he did not know the answer to his own question.

[elion10]

Its hard to pick a "best one liner" from Chris Kelly's post's ..

But to be a republican presidential candidate- "all you need is hostility and a suit." ..

or "disperse that gravitas with Fabreeze"..

its a toss up.

Kelly kills me.

[ragged]

pogo would never run as a republican. ever. you should apologize.

[WilliePilgrim]

Mmmmm...Mayor McCheese...He's not mormon too, is he?

[Leper]

In order to be the Republican frontrunner, he would need to yell "no gay marriage!" and "shoot those illegal mexican bastards!"

Lou Dobbs could be the the Republican frontrunner.

[EngineerBill]

Chris you rock. In one swell foop you reminisc about Norman Mailer's run for mayor of New York while at the same time lament how pathetic the republican presidential field is. You also wonder aloud how a rich billionaire who's mayor of NY could become a serious contender to the presidency. Maybe evolution is starting to work backwards? BTW what is a safety school anyway? that snowed me.