My favorite part of American Idol was always the initial audition period, because that was when the least talented, most delusional people were on TV unintentionally creating comedy gold. This eternal presidential primary season has been a lot like that – and Ted Cruz’s announcement Wednesday of Carly Fiorina as his running mate was no exception.
Picking a running mate when he has almost no chance of becoming the Republican party nominee is just the sort of desperate move I’ve come to expect from Cruz, but that’s another column. Today I want to focus on Fiorina and that creepy song she sang to Cruz’s daughters on live television.
You want to talk about playing the woman card? If Fiorina were a man, we’d all be calling for To Catch a Predator’s Chris Hansen just about now, because that song was the stuff of little girls’ nightmares.
Just like those ill-advised American Idol contestants, Fiorina probably thought it was a great idea to sing to Cruz’s kids on live TV. After all, everybody told her how great it was when she sang about her dog on Jimmy Fallon. But that shows a remarkable inability to distinguish the appropriateness of a given venue.
In case you’re reading, Carly, let me break it down for you: singing a dopey song about your pet on a late-night comedy talk show is charming. Singing a dopey song about someone else’s kids in the middle of a live press conference announcing your intention to become the person a heartbeat away from the presidency is just creepy.
And therein lies the problem with both Fiorina and Cruz. They are 100% university-bred titans of law and industry who excel at academic theory, but they are completely out of their depth when it comes to reading social cues and relating to other human beings. It’s what makes their appearances stilted, unsettling and ultimately damaging to their campaigns.
Take what happened in Iowa during Fiorina’s presidential bid. While she was campaigning in Des Moines last year, she plucked a group of Iowa pre-schoolers from their botanical garden field trip so they could act as props at a right-to-life forum being held on the same grounds. Fiorina ushered about 15 tots to the front of the room, where she spoke about harvesting organs from aborted fetuses.
That’s the level of social ineptitude we’re dealing with. When a reporter from the Guardian emailed to ask why using the pre-schoolers seemed like a good idea to Fiorina, a spokesperson said, “We were happy that these children chose to come to Carly’s event with their adult supervisor.” Not only do four-year-olds not choose to do anything for themselves, their parents weren’t asked permission, either.
One father interviewed by the Guardian later said the first he knew of the event was when his childcare provider told him about the encounter after the fact. “After today, she wouldn’t get my vote for sure,” the father said.
But the question remains whether bringing Fiorina onto the Cruz campaign will help bring his presidential bid back from the dead. And the answer is: probably not. Trump may not make the magic 1,237-delegate number needed to secure the convention if he doesn’t sweep the next few primaries, which theoretically keeps the nomination in play, but he is still the clear frontrunner: there are 502 pledged delegates remaining, and Cruz would need 675 to clinch the nomination outright.
It would be great for Democrats if Carly Fiorina ended up on the Republican ticket one way or the other, because women voters would crucify her at the polls; her anti-abortion zealotry isn’t just scary to children. It’s the stuff of grown women’s nightmares, too.
She supports overturning Roe v Wade and revoking women’s right to a safe, legal abortion. And she promised during her presidential campaign that, were she elected, she would sign into law a bill based on the scientifically debunked theory of fetal pain. Not to mention she wants to completely defund Planned Parenthood, and her most high-profile presidential campaign moment was when she spewed lies on national television about the organization based on doctored videos shot by pro-life activists who were later indicted for fraud by a Houston grand jury.
I’m ready for this political circus to stop. Even American Idol’s reign of terror has finally come to an end – and the company that owns it just filed for bankruptcy. Because watching delusional egomaniacs strut their stuff is funny at first, but after a while, you begin to crave something more substantial than this.
