I'd love to see Meryl Streep win another Oscar, I pray for the invention of fat-burning ice cream and I share many a pageant finalist's dewy dream of world peace. But none of that tops my wish list. What I most hope to witness before I depart for that all-you-can-eat gelateria in the sky is a politician's saying this: I'm running for president/governor/senator because it's about time I moved up in the world, and if I win, the perks are out of control. People will pretty much genuflect before me. I can wring my hands about the environment from the back seat of a chauffeured Escalade with continents of legroom. I'll have a staff big enough for one aide to carry my Purell and another to dispense my Altoids. And there's huge “Meet the Press” potential. Nothing says power like a Sunday morning round table. You just know that some or much of that runs through most candidates' minds. But it never, ever comes out of their mouths. While investment bankers can unashamedly cop to greed, thespians to vanity and claims adjusters to the validation of a promotion, politicians feel compelled to perform an elaborate pantomime of unalloyed altruism, asserting that self-interest and self-satisfaction are nowhere in the equation of their ambitions. They're doing it for us. They'd really rather not. The sacrifice is endurable, only because the cause is so important. Oh please. If people bought that, Congress's approval rating wouldn't have dipped last week to what I'm pretty sure are negative integers and you'd hear mention of Mitch McConnell and Mother Teresa in the same breath. You don't, so I propose that candidates quit the pretense and lose the lofty language. No more talk about heeding “a call,” whether it's from (the divine), voters or Verizon. That talk has been especially noticeable this election cycle: two of the most closely watched Republican presidential candidates, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, describe themselves as recruits and dress their quests in religious garb. Bachmann has mentioned praying .... for divine guidance on a political career, then undertaking one only with “a sense of assurance about the direction I think (the divine) is speaking into my heart that I should go.” Her political narrative hinges on a supposedly serendipitous moment at a 2000 Minnesota Republican convention when compatriots nudged her to raise her hand. She relishes this story, in which she plays the role of vessel rather than agent. But a recent New Yorker profile of her uncovered evidence aplenty that she was plotting her ascent well in advance. The creation myth of Perry's presidential campaign has him succumbing to the will of his wife, who was in turn thinking only of the common good. “This wasn't something I felt compelled to do six months ago or even three months ago, and my prayer was always that one of the people in the group would just explode out there,” he said in Iowa early last week, referring to the candidates in the race before him. When none of them caught adequate fire, he added, “My wife basically said, ‘Listen, our country is in trouble, and you need to do your duty,' and that was a pretty clarion call for me.” I don't doubt his hearing, but it's paired with a proven appetite for swag. A report late last week by the Web site Politico detailed the haul of gifts he and his family have received during his gubernatorial stint, including medical tests for him and his wife, hunting trips and 22 pairs of cowboy boots, at least 10 from a Houston artisan who typically charges upward of $500 a pair. Perry has a healthy dose of vanity. A Texan who knows him well told me: “I've never seen him pass a mirror without looking in it.” Although Sarah Palin hasn't announced whether she'll join the presidential fray, she has provided peeks into her deliberations. In March she told Greta Van Susteren: “I'm still wondering who the heck is going to be out there with a servant's heart willing to serve the American people for the right reason, not for ego.” She earlier told Time magazine, “I would run because the country is more important than my ease, though I'm not necessarily living a life of ease.” Hardship is more like it. The woman who bolted from the Alaska governor's office before completing one term has been running herself ragged with the writing and promotion of two books, a starring role in a television reality series, speaking engagements, and a lucrative on-air analyst gig with Fox. I'm told that when Jon Huntsman met with Republican bigwigs and potential donors before he announced his candidacy, his rap included a riff on all the other, more pleasurable things he might be doing with his time. But the country was a mess, so he was willing to roll up his sleeves. Mitt Romney's supporters cite that same mess as the salient reason he's running. He was done — really done! — after his 2008 defeat in the primaries, but our dire economic straits compelled him to scale the mountain once again. That's the pitch. Cue the inspirational music. Republicans have no monopoly on such self-aggrandizement through self-effacement. When Barack Obama announced his presidential campaign last time around, he referred to “destiny calling” and said he was running “not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.” I've no doubt that he wants to accomplish that, or that Bachmann, Perry and the other candidates looking to unseat him do, too. Their patriotism is credible, even when they exercise it bizarrely, and they're certainly egged on by more than just the promise of gilt and glory. But that promise is in the mix, as it is for strivers in so many fields. If anything there's more — not less — hubris in politics, which demands public exposure and comes with microphones, crowds, clapping. Remember the portrait of John Edwards in the 2010 best seller “Game Change?” Right after a speech, still basking in the applause, he would say to aides: “They looooove me!” At least then they did. For voters, the wise course is to take all the humble-servant patter for the window dressing it may well be, assume egotism and move on to an evaluation of whether a candidate's apparent values and self-interest dovetail with our own. I'd conduct such an assessment, but right now I hear a call. It's the ice cream delivery guy. __
