The following is a paid political announcement from Americans for a Nicer America, a citizen’s interest group formed for the sole purpose of paying for this commercial.
“Hello, I’m a candidate for an elected position. I believe in family, tradition, and God, whenever anybody’s watching, and that’s more than you’ll get from my opponent if even half of the stuff I made up about him is true.
“I have served the needs of my constituents — keeping in mind that my accountant, car dealer, bookie, and mistress are all registered voters in my district — and I stand proudly on the parts of my record that I’ll let you see. Big changes are necessary to bring this country around to the direction I want to go, and there’s every chance that the people of America might benefit accidentally.
“Like with that bill I pushed forward that helped a lot of old people or something. I don’t remember it, frankly, but I’m proud that I inadvertently helped so many people that weren’t on my payroll. Vote for me, and it could happen again!
“Our country is at a crossroads, possibly. My honored opponent has made certain accusations about my character and my campaign. I’d like to refute those claims by getting indignant and working my carefully hand-picked audiences into a righteous rage, which is faster and keeps me from having to actually answer anything. Then I’ll spin it like a judo master until it’s somehow his fault.
“Which is as good a time as any to back away from my previous suggestions that voting for my opponent causes unemployment, hives, or spontaneous human combustion, or that the design on his campaign buttons is secretly an arcane sigil praising the glory of the Dark Lord, Ba’alzebub. Probably not true.
“Nor have I actually ever seen him, personally, eat a baby, despite the blatant hints on the campaign fliers I’ve been mailing out by the metric ton.
“In fact, most of what I’ve said about my opponent is an exaggerated and badly twisted version of something he said once in high school as a joke, which my team then carefully pulled out of context and edited into a continuous loop. We also watched over 300 hours of video to find this one horrible picture of him, where I think he’s in the middle of a sneeze.
“Then we faded it to a reversed kind of scary black-and-white effect, and yow! You wouldn’t want to vote for anybody that looked like that, would you? Here, I’ll scribble horns and a mustache on him. Hee hee! Look at me everyone, I’m a big dufus!
“My fellow Americans, is this the face of someone who deserves your vote? I don’t think so, and I hope you don’t, either.
“Instead, check out these pictures of me standing near real American workers. I’m wearing a borrowed work jacket, here’s me in something called a “baseball” cap, and in this one I’ve even got a borrowed hard hat. That proves I’m the sort of upstanding guy who will say he’s working for you.
“Now I’m not going to lie to you and say that I’ll perform honorably, consistently, or even legally sober. Plus there’s that whole “pants-at-the-office” thing I’m still having trouble with.
“What I can promise is that I’ll give lip service to whatever you think is important. I’ll smile at everybody no matter what I’m thinking. I’ll try really, really hard to never commit a crime when I’m physically at my desk.
“And I can absolutely guarantee you that a vote for my opponent will bring devastation, destitution and despair to the entire house I live in.
“I’m a candidate for an elected position, and apparently I approved this commercial.”