Bad weather and presidential debates just don’t mix

Politics and the weather make for strange bedfellows. And with the presidential race right in the middle of winter, it might be the mother of all confusing questions and answers. Your mind will not let you focus on the positive or on the issues because all you can think about is the weather.

Weather alerts are always kept away from any personnel with their thumb on a nuclear device, just because of the reaction of panic involving the word alert. You feel you have to do something like pack a suitcase and head for the nearest airport, where you will wait in line for hours to find out your flight is cancelled and won’t be available until spring 2020.

Americans are much more comfortable waiting in a line anyway.

The mind, what little is left, does weird stuff when the temperature drops below freezing. You know how when you were in a place where you have to be quiet and reverent, like a funeral, and all you could think about was the joke, the one where you are on a desert island with Brigitte Bardot and a priest.

Soon you are turning blue from trying to stifle a guffaw; eventually you have to stagger out of the church because stuff is coming out of your nose.

Well it’s the same thing during a presidential debate. Now I know there are polls out there on the consensus from questions on everything from national security to how often should you cut your toenails.

But the one item most candidates are worried about and asking themselves is, “Where are my gloves?” For instance, suppose you are in a debate and the topic comes up about Benghazi. Naturally you want to be on top of your game for this question. After all, foreign policy is a major tissue, I mean issue.

Your mind will go into overdrive. Did he say my gloves were in a tree or did I Ieave them in Benghazi? I think that is where Bill and Hillary honeymooned. I know I heard it somewhere.

From there your mind will just wander. Do they get snow there or is this a trick question? How in the world do you spell Benghazi anyway, especially if there is a wind advisory?

I never have this problem, so I would be the perfect presidential candidate for these debates. Since I know I will never be able to split the atom, it goes without saying that I will never have two matching gloves.

So what I do is just wear one glove, like Queen Elizabeth or the Pope. Most of the time, I don’t wear any gloves in the winter. I just drive with the tips of my fingers or sometimes I drive like they are claws frozen to the steering wheel.

This wondering about clothing during severe weather is not as silly as you think. Sometimes candidates will be reasonable about their thinking. For instance, I would be concerned that without my gloves, my hands would become slick, and supposing I was helping lift a couch and it slipped and fell on Wolf Blitzer’s head. Then where would we be?

I can remember my brother and his friends were asked to move a table from the basement out to the patio. Naturally, they managed to let it go through a wall to the outside, where it created a new culvert. Of course, they were not wearing gloves; OK, they also had consumed a couple of bottles of my mother’s best red wine.

Now women candidates don’t have this problem. They have something called estrogen, which is a hormone that blocks any ability to move furniture, unless they are married, and then it enlarges to the point where they could move a house.

So keep your eye on the weather and the debates. Did they say the slowing economy or the snowing economy?