Some fellow named Mike Gravel is running for President. That’s all right, plenty of people write in their own names.

Gravel is upset that he’s been excluded from some debate or other. He charges that, “By denying me the same opportunity afforded to other presidential candidates to discuss in public debate the major issues that confront our nation, the sponsoring media outlets––CNN, The Manchester Union Leader and the Hearst-owned WMUR-TV––are exercising censorship, unbecoming in a free society. They are dictating whose political voice they will permit New Hampshire and American citizens to hear.”

Gravel is lower than gravel. The former cab driver, railroad brakeman and soldier should have gotten a better education at Columbia, perhaps in constitutional law instead of economics. Then he’d realize that none of the MSM outlets he excoriates are public property. They are businesses and, as such, are reliant on the bottom line.

Gravel doesn’t meet their needs.

He doesn’t meet our needs, either. His lone and sole accomplishment in government is a filibuster.

That ought to tell you which side of the cooperation fence he grazes on.

Gravel is said to be, according to his bio, a lecturer. He ought to be lectured on what it takes to be President. This out of touch, aged rebel missed the sensibility boat a long time ago, probably around 1964, a year after he was elected to the House, when his brain turned to oatmeal. With books “published” such as Citizen Power (Citizen Kane was already taken) and Jobs and More Jobs, Gravel comes across like a frustrated union local boss more than a senator.

Not that there’s much difference, either in frustration or talent.

The degree of Gravel’s importance to the 2008 campaign is well summed up by Google. Searching for Gravel brings up first this relevant link. Senator Obama, on the other hand, delivers a donate.barackobama.com URL.

See you when I need to re-do my driveway, Mike, you out of touch, unpatriotic, spend-happy creep. Like the national sales tax in lieu of income tax, though.

Gravel’s humorous bio is here, though it doesn’t say he’s a Democrat. It doesn’t say he’s a communist either, or a Taliban burkha-wearer, so we’ll hold our opinion until some more feces come out of his campaign.

Out on the border, the to’s-and-fro’s of Presidential wannabes are viewed with about the same fear and interest one shows a rock under which a deadly rattlesnake might be lying in wait. You need to get by the rock, first of all. And your fear makes you want to kill the snake right off the bat, if it’s there. Yet you’re interested in it in a mammal-vs-reptile kind of way. If it’s there. So you go take a look, with a baseball bat in your hand.

Stay with me here. I’ve got a point to make that’s bigger than the one on my dog’s head. And I’ve got a sweet Louisville Slugger #3 handy. That rock perhaps hiding the lamest Presidential candidate since I penciled in Mickey Mouse in the primaries back in my laughably rebellious youth.

A few drinks days ago, March 7th to be exact, the Texas Republic was treated to a visit by John Edwards, a man who never met a profane anti-Catholic blogger he wouldn’t hire. Those hirings, and firings, err, forced, err voluntary resignations should have clued Americans as to how unglued unclued Edwards is when it comes to protocol, respect for the people he’s asking to serve, and Nation Management 101.

Be that what it may, Edwards showed the same political acumen as his Democrat colleagues when he spoke to a less-than-full former train station in San Antonio. But the train station didn’t seem to mind. He talked of Hillbilly Hillary and Osama Obama, of AIDS and genocide, and of global warming and snuggly puppies.

He didn’t talk much about Texas. Didn’t say “Fox News Debate” either. Guess he’s a big-picture kind of guy.

He also uttered a perfectly incomprehensible statement: “I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to happen in Iraq no matter what we do, and the American people understand that and they’re entitled to the truth, first of all.”

To rephrase: Americans understand that nobody knows what’s going to happen in Iraq and they’re entitled to know that truth. First of all.

That means I don’t know what’s going to happen in Iraq, Amanda Pandagon Marcotte doesn’t know, and John Edwards doesn’t know, though he knows he’d rather be the snake than the rock.

I guess it did take a few minutes for the Titanic to begin sinking after it struck that frozen rock.

Is there anything less interesting than a Presidential candidate who turns up in your town and says that, truth is, he’s dumber than a chimp in a physics class about the most pressing issue on American minds?

We already knew Edwards was an idiot. He didn’t have to contribute to global warming by flying here to confirm that. He could have just stayed home, hired another chimp for his blog, and let us know he did it, anti-Papist that he is.

Ambulance Chaser Breck Girl, the man who steps over GI’s bodies as casually as he stepped over his lawsuit victims on the way to furnishing his mansion, while on the way to deliberately seeking out idiots, tools and morons to populate his campaign staff, while pondering which idiots, tools and morons would populate his Cabinet, is about as useless as Gucci loafers on a lizard. You stop and gawk at the lizard for a minute, the lizard blinks at you under the burning sun, and then you both go about your business, both of you slightly embarrassed by the encounter.

Then the lizard gets snapped up by that snake you were worried about. And you like the snake better knowing that his belly is full and he doesn’t care so much about you anymore.

So we like Edwards better for having come out from under the rock and shown himself. Now we can all go about our business and forget this pathetic, deluded, self-absorbed, mediocre performer. And he can forget Texas, if we’re lucky, and stop polluting our skies.

Finally, it doesn’t help Edwards that Charlie Gonzalez (D-San Antonio) endorsed him for the Democrat nomination. Doesn’t help Gonzalez either, but Gonzalez has been helpless for so long that traffic light beggars stopped giving him change. They know a snake’s around when they see a rock, too.