Commentator Robert Chipkin has been taking a lot of walks around his Springfield neighborhood this summer. He’s noticed a growing number of political lawn signs of every stripe. He’s been pondering one type that has more stripes than any other.
Look. Look. It’s the Cat in the Hat.
I am not making this up. Like summer dandelions, signs for the fictitious four-legged celebrity keep sprouting. They exhort voters to skip both established parties and instead cast their ballot for a candidate who has a vocabulary of a 5-year-old, and whose track record consists mostly of getting children in trouble when their parents are out.
Now, I’ve always taken great civic pride in living in the city — in fact on the very block – where young Theodor Geisel spent his childhood, romping from Mulberry Street to Forest Park on his way to becoming the much beloved Dr. Seuss. But while I marvel that a non-human candidate has thrown his over-sized hat into the ring, there’s also this — and there’s no politically correct way to say this – he’s a cat.
Cat lovers hold your letters, please. I know plenty of cats and dogs live peacefully under the same roof. With far fewer arguments than your average donkey Democrat and elephantine Republican.
Still, I don’t exactly trust cats. One minute they’re cuddling up to you like some long-lost relative with that enigmatic come-hither smile. And the next, there are those claws.
But I suppose in a dangerous world, having retractable claws is just the ticket when keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.
Of course, as a completely imaginary candidate, the lovable feline doesn’t stand much of a chance to cause mischief on a national scale. And I can hardly object to the favorable publicity for my neighborhood and the Springfield Museums, where the Cat in the Hat will soon have a residence of his own, assuming he won’t be in the White House.
And who knows? Maybe the Cat in the Hat campaign will take off, and all those voters who’ve been clamoring for a change can look forward to four years of a feline-in-chief and his advisors, Thing One and Thing Two.
At least for the Cat in the Hat, everything always works out in the end.
Voters could do worse.”
Robert Chipkin is a columnist for MassLive.