I have been pushing the Amazon.com Kindle version of Profiles in Courageousness for awhile now and I think some people may have mistakenly believed they needed a Kindle to revel in my inspirational story. I noticed this because when I compared my sales to J.K. Rowling, I am definitely trailing the Harry Potter books. If you go to
https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000002060/Profiles-In-Courageousness.html you can download the book in PDF format.
I'm starting to get a bit arrogant about the quality of this book because two great authors have recently read my eBook and gave it rave reviews.
@Brianadamsboone who writes a whole lot of awesome stuff called Profiles in Courageousness "Fucking Hilarious". Check his website at
www,brianadamsboone.com.
Now, I have no idea why they thought the book was a comedy and I certainly don't approve of such vulgar language, but the point is that they liked it. I think if you visited this website, you will too. Don't take my word for it though. Check out the first chapter and see what you think:
If you like the first chapter head on over to
Ebookit and pick up a copy
Chapter One
Andy Griffith is a Democrat?
It was the Corn
Dog Festival in Hampton, in August, 2005, and
the town's gray dilapidated water tower rose above the pastoral landscape
looming like Olympus above the House of
Spaghetti. I breathed in a summer
bouquet of corn dogs, elephant ears, and hard working Joes and Janes. The corn dog is the most Republican of
foods. You take something delicious
like a hot dog, but then you make it better by frying it and you put it on a
stick so you can eat it while you work.
That’s why corn dogs sell so well in red states like Texas.
As I walked
through the park, I could breathe in the fragrant bouquet that the great
melting pot of the Golden
State was cooking up on
that afternoon. Foot-long hot dogs and
cotton candy. Nachos and egg rolls. The toothless banjo players on the rugged
wooden stage and the carnies—always the carnies, those descendants of the
cowboys of the old West finding their manifest destiny hitched to the back of an
old truck with a 30 year old Tilt-a-Whirl.
Inching through
rivers of people like a salmon drawn to spawning grounds, I saw young, carefree
teenagers and a young couple holding a small homely baby. There were many older folks who had seen Hampton go from a small
town of 3,800 in 1970 to its current size of nearly 14,500 today. These
were good, honest folk, the kind that America had been built on.
“Hey Jack! You sure love a good corn dog.”
“Oh wow Jack! You sure are ruggedly good looking in a suave
and sophisticated way.”
“When are you
going to get into politics Jack? Isn’t
it time you gave something back to the state?”
The sun was
beginning to really beat down, and I wiped the sweat from my brow thinking back
to the long days on the family’s olive farm when the heat of the sun could turn
your skin to leather. As I wound my way
through the crowd, a high school dance troupe took the stage, and the music
began to blare, much to the chagrin to the crowd of seniors who had been
enjoying the banjo music. I stopped by
the Right to Life booth where they were selling homemade, fetus shaped, butter
cookies. I plunked down a dollar, and
took one of the cookies. As I ate it, I
thought of how precious human life really is.
It also reminded
me of how impatient I was with politics.
I was so tired of politicians raising my taxes to pump up social
programs for the people of California
when there were so many people who were never born. Why wasn’t anybody doing anything for
them? Politics were tricky. I was connected enough with grass roots
conservatives that they all asked me when I was going to run for office, but I
wasn’t connected enough with the state Republican Party that they’d ever
endorse me for congress in the 54th District.
A friendly
volunteer from the Robert Engle Society poked his head out of his booth and
beckoned over to me. It had been over 40
years since my father had been one of the 12 founders of the group that helped
lead the fight against world wide communism, fluoridation of drinking water,
the infiltration of the civil rights movement by our country’s enemies, the
domestication of cats, and the United Nations.
I had hated the way that political machines and their pals in the media
had distorted things to make the group seem irrational. I admired the brave volunteers who manned the
booth knowing the jeering and heckling they would endure from liberal hippies
who protested the society's goal of trying Bill Clinton for war crimes. If men like these were crackpots because they
wore tinfoil underneath their baseball caps or bottled their own urine, then
maybe we were all crackpots.
I couldn’t help
wonder if I was a little nuts for opening myself up to the same kind of
criticism my dad had. A run for public
office would be difficult, and not all my views were popular with the liberal
elite. My father could have easily ignored
the dangers of an emerging new world order and lived a happy and prosperous
lifestyle. His great-grandfather's
invention of the Kimble Olive Pitter and our land holdings had made the Kimbles
very wealthy. However, the Kimbles had
always been brought up on the grand tradition of service to others.
It seemed that
real public service, crafting policies that were good for business, had been
derailed by politics and its infernal machines. I wanted to help people, and I had an
interest in government. It was an
interest that had first been awakened as a teenager by watching Ronald Reagan
and the way he had stopped the Air Traffic Controllers from striking and had
brought democracy to Central America.
Pursuing public service is what had brought me to Indiana to study at Notre Dame where I
received both my BA and MBA.
Most people
starting out in politics have to start at the bottom. I was lucky because with my father’s
connections and financial support, I knew that the United States Congress could
be within my reach. California’s 54th District is
rather unusual in that it has a small Hispanic voting population, but the
majority of the district is white, wealthy, and over 60. They had been served in the House by Jerry
“Hoop” Hooper for a dozen years and like most of the district he was older,
white, and wealthy. He also wasn’t
terribly influential in the House. In a
Republican district, he seemed to have no trouble voting with the
Democrats. I knew I could beat this guy.
And so, on that
hot August night, I took the stage before an America cover band called Ventura
Highway performed. I faced the electorate, looked them square in
the eye, and I let them know that I
would be running for Congress and needed their support. A whole lot of things could have happened,
and most of them were bad. Then I saw a
young woman who couldn’t have been more than 25 years old in a white floppy
hat. She tucked her corndog in the crook
of her arm and began clapping. Then, like a polio outbreak, the applause
began to spread through the entire crowd.
I began to stop
and smile at the audience, and they returned my enthusiasm. As the band behind me began to play the
opening chords of "Sister Golden Hair," I felt like I was a rock
star. I had committed to the race and
there was no backing out now. I had
developed a strategy that I thought would win in this district, but I needed to
implement it well.
I had done a
little bit of research before entering the race, and I knew that although Jerry
Hooper was a popular representative who did well in a hypothetical poll with
any opponent, his support was neither deep nor committed. I asked my childhood friend John E. Lee to
run my campaign for me, but I made it very clear to him that I had some ideas
of my own, and I would not be the type of politician that is handled. That wasn’t for me.
John and I had
become good friends in 5th grade when we both got our heads stuck in
opposite sides of a bike rack when we dared each other to do it. It was November, and the wind had a bite to
it as we screamed for dear life out on the playground. When the janitor finally sawed us loose, he
called us “the braniac twins”. Somehow, the name just kind of stuck. Nobody would ever pick on John though because
he had a reputation for being mean, and if you got in a fight with him, you
knew he would bite your nose or ear if he got a chance. Oh yes, he loved to bite noses.
As an adult, John
was not all that much taller than he was in 5th grade. At only 5’9” his waist was always spilling
out of his pants like toothpaste being squeezed out of a wrinkled up tube. At 35 years old, he was bald and wore thick
glasses, but what he lacked in looks, he made up for in loyalty and an attack
dog ferocity which I needed if I was to bring up Hooper’s negatives.
As a fiscal
conservative, Jerry had made a major miscalculation when he had argued against
a wage increase for home health care workers to $6 an hour. The move was very popular with many of the
seniors who voted. Unfortunately for him,
the 54th District has a large number of absentee votes, and you can
be sure that many of them were filled out by those very same nurses that he was
putting down.
Nobody was more
popular in my district than the actor Andy Griffith. He didn’t live in the area or even the
state, but Matlock reruns on syndication drew higher ratings than first run
network programming. One of the local stations
had a Tuesday night lineup of Matlock at 5PM, a two-hour Matlock movie at 7PM,
followed by another episode of Matlock at 9PM.
Jerry had been a bit too friendly with a group of people who were
interested in turning that station into a WB affiliate.
The
crowning glory of my election strategy would be Andy Griffith’s endorsement. My dad had a friend who played golf with Andy
Griffith’s agent. I knew that a picture
with Andy Griffith and an endorsement would go quite far in getting me instant
credibility with many of the seniors in my district. I had found out when Andy Griffith would be
coming to California,
and I made plans to meet with him to see if I could get him to support my
candidacy.
After spending 4
hours driving to Los Angeles and another 3 hours
waiting for Griffith
to arrive, I finally got to speak to him in the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel. Despite his advancing years, Andy
Griffith moved with a spryness that belied just how close to death’s door he
really was. We shook hands, and I gave
him my pitch. I told him how I was
pro-business and in favor of the types of wholesome family values that he had
always advocated on his shows. I
promised him that I would help protect our country from terrorism and the
liberal agenda. He sat patiently as he
listened to me speak, but then finally stopped me to say, “I’m sorry son, but
I’m a Democrat.”
Needless to say, I
stood there slack jawed in stunned silence.
John immediately lunged at Andy Griffith, but between me and Mr.
Griffith’s assistant we were able to hold John back and hustle Andy Griffith
out of the room. I still remember
everybody looking at the scene as I screamed frantically, “Cover your nose Mr.
Griffith! Cover your nose!”
I had learned a
valuable lesson about doing proper research before hand. It turns out that Andy Griffith was well
known as a Democrat, and the folks in North
Carolina had even unsuccessfully tried to convince
him to run against Jesse Helms for Senator once. Needless to say, I not only didn’t get an
endorsement, but with John frothing at the mouth and trying to bite him, I didn’t
get a picture with Andy Griffith that day either. I had no better luck with Angela Lansbury
whose grandfather it turns out was once the leader of the Labour Party in Britain.
Unfortunately,
with the primary slated for October 4th, I had less than 2 months to
campaign due to my late entry. Head to
head results showed that I trailed Hooper 55% - 41%. I don’t think the founding fathers ever
meant for getting elected to be so hard.
We tried to hammer Hooper on the issues, but we were only getting so
far. I tried to assure the voters that
while Hooper had voted for the war in Iraq, that I was even more in favor of it,
and while Hooper wanted to lower taxes, I wanted to get rid of them altogether,
but I couldn’t seem to get much above 40%.
Then I like to believe Jesus intervened because what happened next was
surely a miracle.
Jerry Hooper was
living the American dream. At 62, he was
not only serving as a member of the United States House of Representatives, but
he was financially well off from his family's mobility scooter business, and
his daughter Karen was engaged to marry Al Giamoti, the son of an Italian
immigrant who had graduated Stanford Law School and was doing very well in
intellectual property law. Little did
Jerry know that his whole world would be crashing down around him.
It was during a
late night strategy session when John first noticed that Al Giamoti sounded an
awful lot like the Arab name al-Jamati.
At that moment all we had was the inkling of a seed of an idea, but
perhaps we would be able to use this to our advantage. The next day during a campaign stop, an
older woman asked me if there was anything a liked about Congressman
Hooper. I told her I thought he was
lacking as a Congressman, but was a great person and added that I was really
impressed with him as a father. I said
I admired his open-mindedness that in the middle of our war on terror, he would
not stand in the way of his daughter marrying Mister al-Jamati, which was a
wonderful gesture of international peace and understanding. I also pointed out that al-Jamati was not
under federal investigation at this time.
Poor Hoop never
saw it coming. Al had dark Italian
features, and to the voters of my district, he must have looked as Arab as they
come. We hired a telemarketing firm to
call people and ask them questions about their opinion of the wedding designed
to get them to wonder why Congressman Hooper’s daughter was marrying a Islamic
extremist. By the primary day, 7 out of
10 Republican voters in the 54th District believed that Al Giamoti
was actually an Islamic scholar named Khalid al-Jamati who had ties to
terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. By the time Congressman Hooper distanced
himself from his future son-in-law, it was too late.
Congressman Hooper
was too old school to really compete with the strategy that John and I
employed. He kept trying to talk about
his experience and service to the people of the district. These are the sort of things that sound great
on paper, but that voters haven’t really cared about since Gerald Ford was
President. When he claimed I was
dangerously inexperienced, I bragged about my outsider status. When he said my dad was behind my campaign,
I claimed my dad was behind his campaign too.
He had no idea how to react to that one.
Push polling is a
very controversial technique, but I’m not too proud to admit that we used
it. In push polling, you have one of
your staff show up early at a polling place and dress like a worker for your
opponent. That worker then searches for
somebody sympathetic looking who is voting for you. He or she will engage your supporter in
heated conversation before eventually pushing them. If you can find a pregnant woman or a senior
citizen, they make the best targets. We
learned that it’s generally best to avoid veterans, when one of the greatest
generation knocked out one of our young interns who tried this. The trick is to not push hard enough for
them to press charges, but hard enough that everybody at the polling place that
day will be talking about what a jerk you opponent’s campaign worker was. This technique can really swing a close
election.
We did everything
we could to squeeze out every vote that election. If our staffers found somebody driving
obnoxiously or with loud music disturbing other drivers, my staffers were under
instructions to follow that driver and when the car finally parked to put a
Hooper bumper sticker on it. That way,
when the obnoxious driver cut somebody off, they’d see the Hooper bumper
sticker.
When the smoke
finally settled, I won a very hard fought 49% to 43% victory in that
primary. My next stop would be the
general election where I would face a real liberal or at least a moderate named
Bill Joyce. Jerry Hooper called to
congratulate me, but I’m sorry to say that the call was terse and not the
gracious concession that I had hoped for from a man I always admired.
“Mr. Kimble, it’s
me Jerry Hooper. I’m calling to concede
the primary,” he said. I could tell from
his tone that he wasn’t happy.
“Hey Jerry, I was
expecting to hear from you. Can you
believe how well I’m doing? Pretty wild
isn’t it?” I said trying to cheer him up.
“It’s a Goddamned
crime is what it is Jack. I had thought
better of the voters than this,” he said.
At first I laughed
at his joke, but then pulled back as I realized he wasn’t joking. There were a few moments of very awkward
silence.
“Well, you won the
Republican nomination. I have no doubt
the party will be happy to get behind you.
Good luck Mr. Kimble,” he said.
“Great Hoop. I hope I can count on your support. I’d love for you…”
Unfortunately, we
were disconnected. My staff and I had
settled into the ball room at the Bristo Camino Holiday Inn to hear the
election results come in. When I
announced that I had just got off the phone with Congressman Hooper, the room
exploded into applause. An election is
hard work, and it meant so much to those people that all the time spent passing
out leaflets, making phone calls, going door to door, slashing tires, going to
rallies, and getting out the vote had not been in vain. The wedding band that I had hired played Kool
and the Gang’s song Celebration and
we got down Republican style. The
energy in that room was pulsing. You
could literally feel it. Together, we
could change Washington.
There is an
unfortunate footnote to the primary.
Karen Hooper and Al Giamoti stayed married for a little less than two
years. I felt bad for whatever small
part the campaign might have played in their breakup. I’m sure it can’t be easy for a couple of
young people to build a life together when the bride’s father is forced to
distance himself from his future son-in-law for fear of scandal. I wish those two kids all the best. Jerry seems to be doing well since his
retirement from Congress. He’s become a
regular at a local bar called Schultz’s. I’ve seen him around a few times and he seems
much happier without the stress of politics in his life.
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