We’re a couple of weeks past Super Tuesday-just the name of which is an insult to both the Super Bowl and Superman by the way, and anything genuinely super, like glue. But never mind that now.

Before we leave the political world of what’s super and what’s not, let me add it’s also offensive that there is such a thing as super-delegates, who exist only to counter the effect of plain-old regular delegates. (You know, the ones that were elected.) Super-delegates are the crassest kind of machine politics. The ignorant and naive voters cast their ballots for delegates they want in the childish belief they’ll actually be represented by them. That’s the way it should stand in a republic like ours, which is what we are, a republic, not a democracy. In a republic, you see, we vote for delegates and electors and congressmen and senators, and then they go off to do for us what we don’t have time to do for ourselves. Like fly to France.

Oh, what do I know? Maybe backroom wheeling and dealing and jaw-dropping corruption have taken an unfair black eye over the years, and The Powers That Be are right. (Who are “The Powers That Be,” by the way? They’ve probably always been around, but I don’t think anyone actually ever meets any of them. I’d feel better, though, if they called themselves something more interesting, like “The Powers Boothe That Be.” In any case, it’s the “be” part of “Powers That Be” that puzzles me. I always want to say, “that be” what? And isn’t that Ebonics? Good Lord, I wonder if they know…)

Ironic that the same people who want to maintain such grim sway over the smoke-filled back rooms of politics are the same ones who gleefully ensure that it’s now illegal to smoke in back rooms to begin with.

ANYONE WHO WANTS to be President first has to ask him- or herself, “Hmm, I wonder if I can spare every waking second for the next 43 months and only sleep in Marriotts? More important: Is it humanly possible for me to smile that whole time?”

I think that’s why Fred Thompson looked so cranky to people. He wasn’t cranky. He was just the only one who refused to smile like a donkey 23 hours a day. No matter whom he stood next to at the debates, it always made him look like mean old Mr. McCready. (”Oh, no, the ball went into Mr. Thompson’s yard! Now we’ll never get it back.”)

For whatever it’s worth, I worked with Fred Thompson on Necessary Roughness, and he was the nicest guy with the greatest laugh. These were real laughs, too, not political ones. Strange: I’ll bet all the guys running for President who get their hair done and their sweaters matched have no problem laughing endlessly for no reason at all on political shows but can’t laugh for real in their lives, while Fred Thompson had the best, most sincere laugh in real life and just couldn’t bring himself to do it for no reason in politics.

I love seeing those politician pictures with two of them shaking hands and laughing to beat the band. They all do it, you know, even in Europe. I remember seeing a news item of the German president and the French president a couple of years ago enthusiastically shaking hands (not Hans) on the steps of some building in Berlin that had to be slightly rebuilt in late 1945 over some minor mischance or other, a time when I’m guessing neither of them was spending an awful lot of the day laughing.

But this one was almost loony. They were laughing so hard for so long over nothing I thought they were both tertiary syphilitics. We just accept these idiotic pictures and news clips as if they actually meant something, and without noticing their breathtaking insincerity. This one, though, on the steps of the Reichstag (or whatever the hell it was) was when I first realized something about all this was screwy.

You see, folks, I spend my life-my whole life-every minute of every day, with some pretty funny people, and our business is trying to be funny, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t; but the point is that a lot of these guys are awfully good at it, and their batting average is pretty high; and we spend far more time than the average person howling and rolling around on couches and slapping desks with tears coming down than anyone, anytime, anywhere in life…

And WE don’t laugh a fiftieth as much as these maniacs do in their pictures. No one does. No one laughs that much. No one could. Nothing in life is as funny as these hyenas pretend it is.

You know why they do it, don’t you? It projects an air of ease, of safety. Of hope. Hey, everyone, don’t worry. Look! We’re laughing! Everything’s OK. Go back to your simple stalls. Have a demitasse. Go shopping. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

A few presidents ago there was a shot of one of them on the cover of Newsweek or Time (not U.S. News And World Report) in the Oval Office signing something. He was in his pajamas with a bathrobe and slippers and a couple of advisors looking over his shoulder. In other words (the picture says to us) this document was so important we woke the President up to sign it. We’re really on the job. Twenty-four/seven, but that’s the way we like it, and that’s why you pay us. My father and I were looking at it together and then realized…

It’s not real. They didn’t wake him up. They’re not wearing suits at two in the morning. There’s never been a bill that was so urgent it had to be signed that second. They don’t have photographers ready with the room perfectly lit. It’s not even possible. The President was as posed with his pen for that shot as the head of a furniture store for a p.r. glossy in 1970. They all might as well have been looking at the camera and smiling.

Folks, if anything ever really happened (God forbid) that was so urgent they had to wake the President up, you and I wouldn’t be around a week later to see it on the cover of Newsweek. Because I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be in the group they saved in the bunker in Colorado. I mean, let’s be honest. At that point they’re probably not looking for storytellers who dwell on minutiae.

By the way, it wasn’t too long after that magazine cover that another President actually took to wearing his pajamas-metaphorically-into the Oval Office. And I swear, I don’t know which one made me sadder.

LARRY MILLER  Monday, 2/18/08

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