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Have You Driven a Ford, Lately?
Former First Lady launches U.S. Senate bid
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Business New Haven
9/20/1999
By: Betty Ford
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I know that some of you thought my husband was a bit boring. Of course, if Al Gore gets elected President, my Gerald will seem, in retrospect, like Abraham Lincoln with a good joke writer.
That being said, you only saw my Gerald in public, with full pomp and circumstance. Imagine what it's like to live with him, when he doesn't even have to pretend to be exciting.
Now, my Gerald doesn't fool around with young women, interns or otherwise. If he did, I'd push him down the stairs a lot faster than he managed to fall down them without any help. Unlike some First Ladies, I wouldn't stand by my man. If Gerald fooled around, he'd be wandering the streets, looking for his next meal.
No, my Gerald is a good man, a decent man, a man who would be thought of as a great American President if he hadn't been so distracted cleaning up that little mess that Dick Nixon left him
But that was then and this is now. Gerald plays golf, sits on a few boards and gives a few speeches.
I need a hobby. I need to be back in the public eye, offering up some good, solid Midwestern common sense to a nation that would rather watch reruns of Felicity than participate in the electoral process.
With that in mind, I am announcing my candidacy for the U.S. Senate, representing the great State of Connecticut.
Why Connecticut. I have a great deal of knowledge about the State of Connecticut - far more than you actually think I do. My Gerald went to Yale Law School, just like certain other Presidents. I well remember my days in New Haven and North Haven and West Haven and South Haven and all the other little Havens.
On the campaign trail, we spent many wonderful nights at fundraising cocktail parties with rich people in Greenwich, which is a New York suburb just over the border from Connecticut, but close enough so that I met many fine Connectuckians from such places as Southport, Northport, Eastport, Westport and all the other little Ports (except Bridgeport which, as I understand it, doesn't permit Republicans to live there).
I choose to run in Connecticut because the Brown Sugar State - er, excuse me, the Nutmeg State - squished between Massachusetts and New York, needs some star power in Congress to make itself heard. When the Connecticut delegation whines about the problems of Lebanon and Berlin and Bethlehem and Scotland, the bills get referred to the Foreign Relations Committee, whose members think the Insurance Capital of the World is Bermuda.
For those of you who are jealous about New York having a real-certified, victimized woman to vote for in its Senate race, let me be clear about my own credentials in that area. I am not a victim because I chose to stay with a skirt-chaser; I've been a victim the good old-fashioned way. I have been a victim of such proportion that they even named a damned clinic after me. That's right. The Betty Ford Clinic. I wasn't addicted to power; I was addicted to lots of other bad stuff, though.
As for my opponent in this election, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, let me say that it's not enough to speak out against dirty videos, if you don't have the courage to impeach a President who produced, directed and starred in his own dirty video, with the White House as his studio.
And speaking of Joe Lieberman: To all my Connecticut friends of the Jewish persuasion, Jerusalem Forever! (Whew. Almost forgot that.) And to all my Connecticut dairy farmer friends in Goshen and Griswold and Granby, let me say that as a compassionate conservative, I will vote to extend the Northeast Dairy Compact Price Fixing Cabal on Milk forever; the citizenry deserves to be protected from the evils of cheap dairy products.
And to the Connecticut Republican Party and its chairman, Chris DePino - who, I have been told, plays the harmonica (I wish my Gerald did something cute like that) - I promise that I will travel I-95 between Hartford and Springfield; I will travel Route 2 between Waterbury and Meriden; I will travel Route 6 (when it is constructed), meeting and greeting the good citizens of Connecticut, offering them the star power that they deserve. It takes a village to build a candidacy - because that's where all the Republicans live.
(Columnist Laurence D. Cohen assisted in the preparation of this campaign message.
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