It hasn’t escaped attention down here that it’s an election year. My buddy Eugene, who cares about these things more than is good for him, explained to me the other day why George Bush is going to be our next President.

“Well,” he said, “first we had Jimmy doing his Woodrow Wilson impression, right? Upright Christian soul, square dealing among the nations, all that B.S. Now we’ve got a Harding clone—less filling, tastes great, back to normalcy with handsome Mr. Feel-Good. Except it seems like we got him for the whole eight years, so the way I figure it we’re overdue for Coolidge. Now ask yourself: Who does the best Coolidge going?”

“Paul Simon?” I suggested.

“Forget him. Revenge of the Nerds: The Final Chapter. Half the voters think he’s the one that makes records with Zulus, anyway. Be serious. What real candidate would look stupidest in an Indian warbonnet?”

Well, I had to admit that he had George Bush there. That’s the kind of oblique angle that usually makes Eugene worth listening to. He’s the one who told me why there’s still some life in the bull market, despite the little correction last October. “Seven fat years, then seven lean years,” he said, taking a pull on his Pabst Blue Ribbon. “It’s in the Bible. You can look it up.”

When the South’s Democratic politicos set up the Super Tuesday primary, some hoped it would help a home-boy like Chuck Robb or Sam Nunn get the nomination. But the leading homeboys apparently took one look at what they’d have to kiss and eat to get the nomination (and I’m not talking about babies and bagels) and decided that if being senator or governor was good enough for Richard Russell and Harry Byrd, it was good enough for them. Now it looks as if the principal effect of Super Tuesday will be a boost for the embarrassing campaign of Jesse Jackson—a home-boy sure enough, but not exactly what our solons had in mind.

What has happened? Is returning the party of Jefferson and (Andrew) Jackson to something like their principles really a lost cause? For that matter, what’s wrong with lost causes? We used to be attached to them down here. Where are the old-time rebel-yell attack-and-die Southern Democrats?

There used to be two political styles in the South: on the one hand, boring conservative penny-pinchers who ran good minimalist state governments; on the other, grotesque, extravagant creatures from the depths—expensive, but entertaining. Politics in most Southern states cycled from one style to the other. But penny-pinching is out of style, and Edwin Edwards may have been the last of the great rogue governors from hell. Now we’re getting the worst of both styles: boring big spenders. You might say we’ve traded blowhards for blow-dries. Even Louisiana is filling up with Carteresque pinstripes who talk like James Moffett, head of the Louisiana Council for Fiscal Reform, quoted as saying that “A modern era of politics is fixing to evolve.”

Among the Democratic presidential candidates, only Jesse Jackson has anything to offer someone nostalgic for the old tradition of demagoguery and hypocrisy, but I guess you can’t expect nostalgic traditionalists to cotton to Jesse. Aside from Jackson, young Al Gore is the only Democrat who can claim any Southern connection, but he’s very much in this new mold. Between tokes. Tipper’s husband did put in some time in the state his daddy represented in the Senate, but (as even the Wall Street Journal has noticed) Gore is less a Southern candidate than a Washington political consultant’s idea of a Southern candidate. Frankly, he’s a Southerner like George Romney was a Mexican, and if folks down here buy him as a favorite son, it will be a triumph of political marketing.

Meanwhile, all the Republicans have to offer is Pat Robertson. (Yes, I know George Bush claims he’s a Texan, but he owns a funeral plot in Kennebunkport, Maine. Need I say more?) What about the reverend?

Well, I heard a story once about this gospel quartet that was singing a gig at a church back up some hollow in East Tennessee. Midway through the service, the deacons start hauling in cages, and it becomes clear that some snakes are going to be handled. The baritone turns to the lead tenor and whispers, “Where’s the back door?”

“I don’t see one,” the tenor whispers back. The baritone casts a glance at the back wall. “Where do you reckon they want one?”

A lot of people feel that way about Robertson. In many circles, as Jesse Jackson might put it, he’s respected, but he won’t get elected.

So it looks as if we don’t get a Southern candidate this year. Maybe after the last one, some folks think that’s just as well. At least the conventions are going to be in Atlanta and New Orleans, though, so some of our people are going to make some money off this deal anyway.

One of the remaining good things about America is that we don’t have to watch politicians if we don’t want to. Last August, the 2,500 good Americans of Mountain City, Tennessee, rose in righteous and near-unanimous wrath when the local cable company replaced the game shows and reruns of the USA Network with something called C-SPAN, which offers stuff like live coverage of Congressional committee meetings.

A letter-writer in the weekly Tomahawk put her finger on the basic problem with C-SPAN: It’s “boring,” she said. Other irate mountaineers wrote to say that they resented having a “government channel” thrust into their living rooms, but that’s not fair. Believe it or not, C-SPAN is actually not a government channel. Apparently somewhere there are private citizens willing to pay to watch politicians preen themselves. But not in Mountain City.

We’re not crazy about it here in Chapel Hill, either. Last September our 21,000-seat gymnasium, often used for rock concerts, was the site of an alleged debate among the Democratic presidential candidates. When it was announced that the seven (at that time) dwarfs were coming, the university news bureau got calls asking what kind of music the “Presidential Candidates” played. When our people realized the horrible truth, they stayed away in droves. David Bowie had filled the place earlier in the week at $20 a head, but only a quarter of the seats were occupied as the candidates shared their predictable views on education and kicked Bill Bennett around for a while.

The proceedings were supposed to be televised, but a technical snafu blacked out the first 20 minutes, which our local educational station filled with a documentary on Finland. They got some telephone complaints—when the glitch was corrected. Folks wanted to see the rest of the program on Finland.

Nothing personal, Democrats. About the same time, down in South Carolina, they had trouble filling a stadium for the Pope. Aside from some mutterings out of Bob Jones University and one grumpy “My Holy Father is in Heaven, not Rome” bumper-sticker, I didn’t detect any anti-Catholicism around here. But neither was there any rush to go see the leader of somebody else’s religion. Catholicism for the Catholics seemed to be the dominant view, which made it difficult for the visit’s sponsors since there were probably more seats in the stadium than Catholics in South Carolina. I gather they wound up busing the Pope’s coreligionists from Pennsylvania and points north.

But enough about politics and religion. Let’s talk about why hot dogs come in packages of 10 when buns come in packages of eight or 12. The North Carolina Independent (from which I also got the Mountain City story) reports that two researchers at a little-known land-grant school in Raleigh answered that question in last October’s Journal of Business. The discrepancy exists because people want it that way, that’s why. “If in fact customers wanted to have hot dogs and buns in equal packages,” these scholars wrote, “someone would have already done it.”

Your tax dollars at work. Next question?