Now that 7,000 American men and several drunk farm animals have officially declared their candidacies for President, keeping track of them has never been more confusing or difficult. Luckily, we’ve put together a “cheat sheet” with “quick trivia” to help the political layperson discuss with confidence the nuances of each male candidate’s views and legitimacy. Feel free to use any and all of these in kicky water cooler conversations about politics this summer, and impress your friends!
Rick Santorum
Who? A frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter, frequently found on the wrong side of history.
Strength: Unprecedented chickenfucking stamina.
Weakness: Muscular thighs 😉
Lindsey Graham
Who? Definitely not a lesbian. I know that for sure.
Strength: Literally doesn’t know how to do anything else but grandstand about politics. If society ended and it was every man for himself, the strong would definitely eat the bloggers and Lindsey Grahams first.
Weakness: About as inspiring as a half-licked yogurt lid.
Mike Huckabee
Who? Jolly sociopath from Arkansas. The one Megyn Kelly always rhetorically spanks on her show.
Strength: Real affable.
Weakness: Famous for aligning self closely with people who abuse animals and children.
Fig. 3: Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum
Martin O’Malley
Who? Former Maryland Governor
Strength: Is hot, can play guitar.
Weakness: Is Tommy Carcetti from The Wire.
Chris Christie
Who? Oh, you know. That guy. That dick guy from New Jersey. The Springsteen fanboy who had his feelings hurt when Bruce was like, ugh, not you. The one who yells. You know the one.
Strength: Loud.
Weakness: A dick.
Fig 4: Martin O’Malley, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie
Marco Rubio
Who? Oh, man. Uh, he’s a Senator right? From Florida? And he’s Cuban.
Strength: Inspiring to the base, young enough to seem fresh.
Weakness: Balding, a natural byproduct of aging for many men. But, in our denial of the finite nature of our lives, voters want a President who they can imagine living forever. It’s not fair, Marco. It’s not fair. Why do we pretend? Why do we fear the beautiful inevitability of silence?
Rand Paul
Who? That guy those ultimate frisbee players were talking about on the bus.
Strength: Free pot for everybody, even fetuses.
Weakness: Is made of mostly water, susceptible to infections resulting from ever-evolving microbes.
Lincoln Chaffee
Who? ????
Strength: Sounds like he might be good at ??? baseball??? In the 40’s maybe?!?
Weakness: Like every human being who has ever existed, like every human civilization that ever existed, he will one day die.
Bobby Jindal
Who? Some nerd from Louisiana
Strength: Excellent security system.
Weakness: Everything made by people must come to an end. Paint peels off, books are forgotten, buildings collapse and are buried beneath hundreds of years of soil. Rome ended whimpering. The Aztecs were all slaughtered. What difference does it make who is in office when a Cortez or Pizarro lands ashore?
Fig 5: Lincoln Chaffee, Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul
Jim Webb
Who? zzz
Strength: zzz
Weakness: The other week I was cleaning out my room and I came across a box of keepsakes—ticket stubs, maps, newspaper clippings—that I’d been saving. Who are these for? I said aloud. I’m not going to have a child. They’ll just be another thing for somebody to throw away.
Fig. 6: Werner Herzog, Werner Herzog, George Pataki dressed as Werner Herzog at ComicCon
Ben Carson
Who? The doctor. The actual doctor. Isn’t it funny that Scott Walker, a college dropout, thinks he’s as qualified to run America as a literal brain surgeon? That’s some white man confidence.
Strength: Brain surgeon.
Weakness: How could the pitiful finiteness of our individual consciousness be worth preemptively mourning, if nobody has any knowledge of what the alternative is?
John Kasich
Who? A clump of cells, conceived out of sheer luck, nurtured from zygote into fetus into baby into man that gradually aged without succumbing to innumerable indifferent deadly hazards at every step of life.
Strength: Is made from the same material that existed at the moment of the creation of the universe.
Weakness: Every day, every atom in his body loses an infinitesimal amount of energy. Just as your body does. Just as my body does. We are skidding to a stop over billions of years, slowing until there’s nothing left.
George Pataki
Who? Water, air, electricity, bile.
Strength: I remembered his name for this list.
Weakness: What happens after this? We swim forward like sharks, gulping it all down, washing experiences over our gills so that we can breathe, and for what? At the end we sink and dissolve. Our consciousness is the product of a vulnerable biological shell, instantaneously breakable, endlessly fragile. The limited life spans of our living matter doom us to make the same mistakes over and over as a species, never passing on the full accumulated wisdom of those who died before us. Eventually, we all fade back into the biological sludge from whence we came, our secrets, our hopes, our dreams dissolved to their atomic fragments.
Robert David Steele
Who? All of you and none of you.
Strength: Is.
Weakness: If a big enough meteor strikes us before next November, we won’t have to worry about any of this.
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Images via Wikimedia, Getty.
