With the 2016 election season careening headlong into its long-overdue climax, this reporter sat down with the perennial candidate, Mr. Arnold Tobin, to get his thoughts on the current state of presidential politics.
Interviewer: Mr. Tobin, thank you for taking time out of your busy day to share your impressions concerning the presidential election.
Arnold Tobin: No problem, Lionel, but I’m afraid I don’t do impressions of the presidential candidates. I leave that to the professionals, like Tina Fey, Rich Little, and that Baldwin brother…you know the one – the one that got old and fat and keeps threatening to leave the country if the candidate of his choosing doesn’t win.
Interviewer: Do you mean Alec Baldwin?
Arnold Tobin: That could be the guy. I can never remember his name. I know he was married to Kim Basinger. Her, I remember – him, not so much.
Interviewer: Tell me, Mr. Tobin…
Arnold Tobin: Please, Liam, this is our third interview, together. Call me by my first name.
Interviewer: All right, then, Arnold, you have been uncharacteristically quiet during this election cycle. Why is that?
Arnold Tobin: You’re right, Lester. Usually, I run a write-in campaign in which I let the good folks casting their ballots decide which office they feel I will mess up the least. My campaign promise has always been to do as little as possible, and to try to not make things any worse. There are professional politicians that have worked hard, their entire careers, to get things as bad as they are, now. This time around, we started the whole fracas with nearly two-dozen candidates on both sides of the political fence. One by one, they fell off the fence, and all we have left is a choice between bad and really, really, really bad – I’ll let your readers decide which one is which.
Interviewer: But, why have you been conspicuously silent?
Arnold Tobin: Lenny, I call it the vast chicken wing conspiracy. A while back, I went into one of my favorite watering holes, ordered a cold one and a plate full of hot wings, and found myself listening to an animated debate coming from a group of people in the booth next to me. At first, these folks seemed like they were all friends, but when the conversation turned to politics, things got ugly – fast. None of them had a positive thing to say about their own candidate – nothing to justify their support — just nasty, mean, hateful, venom about the other candidate. What’s worse, they had equally mean, nasty, and downright vicious things to say about anyone that supported the opposing candidate. I thought I was in a biker bar in Modesto. It was scary.
Interviewer: But, why have you been quiet about all of this?
Arnold Tobin: Well, Luis, friendship preservation. I don’t do that Facebook thing very much — I don’t care how drunk a bunch of party girls can get or what someone I really don’t know has decided to eat for lunch – but, recently an old friend posted a political comment and I responded with, what I thought was, a reasonable contrary position – a little something to stir up the conversation. My good friend – a friendship decades in the making – a friend with whom I could always bend an elbow and discuss the hysterical foibles of life — took umbrage with my comment and labeled me as, “a special kind of stupid.” I didn’t even know there were special classifications of stupid — Wikipedia doesn’t break it down that way.
Interviewer: That must have been disheartening.
Arnold Tobin: Disheartening ain’t the word for it, Lincoln. What’s going to happen on Nov. 9, when this whole mess is over and everyone in America has lost half of their friends? Like I said, a lot of people have worked their entire careers to get things as bad as they are, now. I don’t know if the swamp will ever get drained, but I’m thinking about rooting for the alligators – maybe they’ll go after Alec Baldwin, first.

Larry Wilson is a mostly lifelong resident of Niles. His optimistic “glass full to overflowing” view of life shapes his writing. His essays stem from experiences, compilations and recollections from friends and family. Wilson touts himself as “a dubiously licensed teller of tall tales, sworn to uphold the precept of ‘It’s my story; that’s the way I’m telling it.’” He can be reached at wflw@hotmail.com.