Creep Show

[photo from HERE]

Probably not a newsflash, but I’m here to tell you that this year’s crop of presidential candidates is the creepiest ever.

We’ve had creepy candidates before, here and there, and we’ve elected creepy presidents. Richard Nixon was about as creepy as they come. His 1972 campaign team was even called CREEP (the Committee to Re-Elect the President.) In this year’s race, though, Nixon would be just another face in the crowd.

A couple of candidates who dropped out were as creepy as a spider crawling up your leg. Ben Carson said he attempted murder when he was a teenager. When some reporters questioned whether or not he had tried to stab someone, he became indignant that they didn’t believe his claims of trying to kill a fellow human being. If that doesn’t qualify as creepy, little does. Chris Christie had a bit of creep factor already, but it skyrocketed when he was seen on-stage endorsing Donald Trump while standing in the position usually reserved for a candidate’s wife. The shifty-eyed death stare he gave the audience was just a bonus.

Bernie Sanders, through no fault of his own, is the oldest remaining candidate. And age has a built-in creep factor. People don’t like to think of aging or dying. Since I hope to one day attain the age Bernie is now at, I don’t like to acknowledge age-related creepiness, but it’s still a fact. The only thing creepier is someone around the same age trying to hide it via make-up or some sort of patently bad comb-over.

Speaking of which, hello Mr. Trump! The Donald is, of course, the creepiest of all the candidates. It would be easier to make a list of his non-creepy attributes than his creepy ones. From having to think about how early he must get up in order to get that hair in shape each morning, to his orange skin and white eyelids, to his unnatural preoccupation with women’s plumbing and the size of his own genitalia, his creepiness is off-the-charts. Despite Ted Cruz having been compared to Grandpa Munster – you can’t get much creepier than that - Trump manages to make Cruz appear as wholesome as Ward Cleaver by comparison.

I’m tempted to say the creepiest thing about Hillary Clinton is her husband, but recent appearances on talk shows have made me rethink that. Maybe you or I would be so tickled at having Bernie Sanders question our qualifications for the presidency that we’d break out in a spasm of cackling laughter the like of which has been unheard since the Evil Queen in Snow White, but I doubt it. It struck me as the type of patently phony laughter used by creeps to emphasize a point. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she really does laugh that way and, if so, brrrrrrrrrrr.

We are, so far, reluctantly facing the choice of the lesser of four creeps (five, if you want to count John Kasich, but he’s mostly creepy just because he refuses to acknowledge that he’s dead.) This could be the first election since 1972 where Richard Nixon would have had a legitimate chance.

Soon, but I'll be damned if I know with what.