We’ve been listening to various local congressional candidates give their campaign spiel on the talk radio show At Issue, partly because the host, Ben Merens, is a no-nonsense kind of guy who will doggedly pursue even the most evasive guests who couldn’t give a straight answer if they were reading off flash cards, but mostly because the overwhelming majority of the candidates are loopier than a bowl of pasta.

During our commute home yesterday Mister Merens was interviewing the Democratic candidate for the first congressional district, John Heckenlively, whom My Darling B said she would have voted for on the strength of his cool name alone. Her hopes faded quickly away, however, as Mister Heckenlively evaded answering virtually all Ben’s questions, although I shouldn’t really use a word like “evade” without evidence that Mister Heckenlively is clever enough to use evasion, evidence that was in short supply during his interview with Ben Merens.

Mister Heckenlively’s qualifications for office seem to be limited to his outsider status. If he had any other special qualities that might have compelled us to vote for them, he was unable to recall them, and believe me, Mister Merens tried to get Mister Heckenlively to cough up one or two more, but it was like pulling hen’s teeth. You’d think that Mister Heckenlively, a former social studies teacher, would understand the importance of giving the most complete answer possible when called upon, but if he ever put himself in the shoes of his students, he didn’t show it.

After Mister Heckinlively’s disastrous interview, the incumbent, Paul Ryan, sat down before the microphone. Mister Ryan has been in the house for twelve years and has the practiced patter of a used-car salesman. Ben Merens had only to ask Mister Ryan a question and he became a perpetually jabbering machine, unable to stop until Mister Merens stuck a metaphorical crowbar in Mister Ryan’s rhetoric and pried open a gap big enough to get a word in edgewise. And because he was such a polished incumbent, Mister Ryan would say the most amazing things without giving away the slightest hint he was talking moonshine, maybe to make the sale, maybe just because it gives him great pleasure to offer his constituents the same old shit and call it Shinola.

For instance, in answer to the question from Mister Merens, Why should people vote for you when they feel incumbents are the source of the current economic problems? Mister Ryan admitted that congress does indeed have a lot to answer for, that the anger of his constituents is not misplaced, but was quick to promise that he’s going to make it up to them by lowering taxes, reducing government spending and balancing the budget. It beats me how he gets voters to eat that up with a spoon year after year, but all the evidence says he does.