“Hello, Mrs. Cleaver, can Wallace come over and help me stack the Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges?”

      

“You know, Mr. Cleaver. When I grow up I’m going to smoke a pipe just like you, sir. And also, I plan to kill health care reform!”

       

For the last few weeks I’ve been watching the political debates. Have you? More particularly, have you noticed all the Republican candidates are channeling the spirit and, sometimes, the smarmy personality of Eddie Haskell.

      

Eddie Haskell? Could this be intentional? Or just an amazing coincidence?

       

Eddie Haskell, if you don’t recall, was an American TV character, but a cultural icon all the same. One of Wally’s friends on “Leave It To Beaver,” Eddie was the one you couldn’t trust, the smiling, backstabbing boy who was always manipulating people, sucking up to the adults, telling them what he thought they wanted to hear. Very often, stirring up the plot just to make trouble. But Eddie’s fatal flaw was you could always see through him, see the wheels turning, the eyes calculating, the sham arising.

       

So, I’m watching the debate, and there’s Scott Brown smiling at the audience while Eddie Haskell says, “Gee, Professor Warren, I’m truly sorry I mentioned you’re being a pretend Cherokee warrior. I’d stop talking about it ‘cept no one will let me.”

       

Or there’s Paul Ryan as Eddie Haskell proclaiming, “Dismantle Medicare? Me? I never suggested such a thing. I was just taking my beloved mother—who is much given to charitable works—down to the Medicare office so she’ll always have the best medical care a son, or a country, could provide.”

       

But the best Eddie Haskell, the one impersonation so smooth and successful it’ll take weeks till you realize you’ve been fooled, was the Mittster’s!

       

“Ah, shucks, Mrs. Cleaver, I never intended my tax program to give all that money back to my billionaire and millionaire friends. And Wallace knows I have secret plans to replace Obamacare with something better. I can’t tell you what those secret plans are, Mrs.Cleaver—I would have to kill you, if I did, haha. You’ll just have to trust me.”

       

Mitt was just too good. He out-Eddied Eddie! And we were all so busy figuring out who put the knockout powder in Obama’s Gatorade we never stopped to question all the silken lies the viewers were swallowing, one after the other, as Mitt spewed them out with full Eddie Haskell temerity.

       

“Gee, Mr. Cleaver, if you like my new and improved Caring and Kind Persona, perhaps you’d like to hear how I’m going to help all those undocumented Mexicans and South Americans happily self-deport themselves. Or why my slow emasculation of Medicare will actually be good for older Americans. Or how the destruction of America’s social safety net will actually reduce poverty. Or why…”

       

It’s funny to realize Eddie Haskell hasn’t disappeared from my life, or from the American culture.

       

For some strange reason he’s joined the Republican Party.

       

And Eddie being Eddie, he’s still trying to cause trouble.