Could She Be Our Next Vice-President?

For some odd reason, Delta Airlines recently put me in the first class section on a flight from Atlanta to Caracas.

As I sat there uncomfortably comfortably among people who had a lot more money than I ever dreamed of having, the flight attendant managed to make me even more uncomfortable by asking if I would like some wine with my meal. I decided to join the crowd, but said that I would like white wine—everyone else I could see had something red in their glasses. “Of course,” she said, and went to the front of the plane.

A few moments later she returned not with one unopened bottle, but two, and asked me which I would prefer. The only thing I know about wine is how to spell the word: w-i-n-e. After all I am a writer and not a wine connoisseur. Spelling is what we writers deal with, but I even had to go to a dictionary to find out how to spell “connoisseur” – not a part of my usual vocabulary.

Not to feel too stupid, I asked her which she would recommend. She replied, “I don’t know anything.” So, I pointed to one bottle and she left to open it. I started to laugh.

When she returned I asked her if she was thinking of running for the vice-presidency of the United States. She looked at me strangely and so I added, “You said you don’t know anything. Hasn’t that become one of the important qualifications?”

Then I said, “If you want to run, I would be willing to run for the presidency. I think I would be equally qualified.”

She gave me an even stranger look, didn’t seem to get the joke, and poured some wine for me to sample. I really had wanted a glass of cold milk with my meal (m-i-l-k), but I said the wine I had chosen was excellent. I then wondered why the flight attendant hadn’t asked me before if I would have liked some milk with my meal.

In the United States we are given two choices every four years so as to decide who will rule the world for the next four, and we call this representative democracy. In life and in U.S. politics, I guess we sometimes get what we ask for, but others decide for us what our choices will be and we, to be normal, go along so we won’t look stupid. And thus we end up not looking stupid, but—like all those around us—becoming such.

There has got to be a better way.

(Charles Hardy is author of ­Cowboy in Caracas:  A North American’s Memoir of Venezuela’s Democratic Revolution, published by Curbstone Press (www.curbstone.org/bookdetail2.cfm?BookID=193&view=BL).  Other essays by Hardy can be found on his personal blog www.cowboyincaracas.com .  You may write him at cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com.)