Alfred E. Neuman for president

The lesser of ten clowns. Warning: a NSFW rant if you are using a transcript reader.

I just got home from voting. When I got up this morning, very early, I still had not decided who I was going to vote for in the 2024 presidential race. Longtime readers of Howlin’ will be aware of my very public display of angst over this awful choice. And from 04:00 MST until approximately 10:37 MST, I was still undecided.

As fate would have it, there was a bit of a glitch at the polling station. My foster kids discovered that my wallet is full of colorful cards that make fun playthings, so my drivers license has recently gone missing. In Idaho, it takes months to get a replacement driver’s license. Fortunately, the workers at the polling station accepted the photo of my license on my phone as proof of identity, and it was into the voting booth.

It took every bit of that extra time to make up my mind.

As I scanned column one on my ballot, the candidates for POTUS, I was struck by the fact that not even one of the nine candidates listed on the ballot for POTUS deserves, by way of merit, to be anywhere near the Oval Office. Up first was Claudia De la Cruz, a socialist who represents the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Don’t think so. Then Kamala S. Harris, the Democratic nominee. Nope. Next was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vax nut job who only looks reasonable due to numerous illiberal attempts from the left to unconstitutionally silence him. A putz made popular almost solely by his political opponents. Go figure.

Chase Oliver is what currently passes for a Libertarian, but the Libertarian party mess is fodder for not just a column but a book. Joel Skousen is a survivalist who’d like, no doubt, to have access to our nuclear codes to make all of his wildest dreams come true. Jill Stein is an unserious perennial distraction worth a paragraph or two in the national press every four years and not much else.

Then there’s Randall Terry. What a piece of work. If you look up “asshole” in the dictionary, it’s Terry waving at you. Then Trump, the Republican nominee. Enough said. Finally, there’s Shiva Ayyadurai, a sort of lightweight Vivek Ramaswamy with none of the charm but a boatload of pseudoscientific nonsense upon which he’s built his candidacy.

What the actual fuck?

All nine of these yutzes are clowns. The only two on the list who are anywhere close to serious, Trump and Harris, are vastly unqualified for the job. The ballot might as well be a page out of a comic book. As I stood there, my foster kids over in the corner patiently waiting for either divine inspiration or a bolt of lightning to strike, the clouds parted, revealing clear blue skies and Cecil B. DeMille God rays pointing to an epiphany.

And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God...

The only rational choice among such comical figures was the actual king of comic books, Alfred E. Neuman. So this morning, at approximately 10:39 MST, I proudly cast a write-in vote for Alfred E. Neuman as president of the United States.

I feel your look. My friends on the left are horrified that I didn’t vote to save democracy (actually, I did). My friends on the right are going to be pissed that I didn’t hold my nose and vote for better federal judges, agency heads, and shrinking the federal bureaucracy. I will simply remind them that I spent a lot of time in DC during the Trump years and found that despite all of the forces being aligned to promote a conservative agenda, very little of lasting substance was actually accomplished. Plus, I can’t vote for a guy that I might have to whip for the way that he talks about women if we ever meet.

Look, it’s not my fault that your parties put up lousy candidates. Neither of the two major parties in this country is actually interested in the likes of myself and my kind, i.e., true independents, until an election is imminent. There’s a little courtship, an attempt at a quickie, then, once the election is done, right back to batshit crazy. The only thing that lasts is the STD.

Look, the first party who gets their act together enough to nominate a Larry Hogan, a Josh Shapiro, a Ron DeSantis, an Andy Beshear, or a Nikki Haley gets my serious attention (maybe even a kiss). Though I find much to disagree with among all of the above, they are all serious people. Not comic book figures.

Until then, I’m proud of my vote. I’ll take the lesser of ten clowns all day if that’s all the choice that I have.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com