A Brief, Shining Moment In The World Of Politics <OR>
Karl Does Politics

The season was Springing into Summer, with all the beauty nature could offer. If only we could eliminate the season's pests, like flies, mosquitos, politicians, fire ants, and income tax.

The phone rang, and before I could get a word out I was assaulted by the Pitch: "Daniels for President here, Karl, my friend, we need your help."

"Sorry," I said, "I gave at the office." Hee hee hee, I can be so clever sometimes.

"You don't understand," came the voice, enthused with election excitement, "We need your help as a consultant."

I sat up at this. Ego took over, and I imagined myself providing the computer knowledge to propel some previously unelectable schmuck into the White House. There, realizing his limitations, he would appoint me to the newly created Department of Computing, a Cabinet position. Visions of limos, staff, wood-paneled offices, private lunches at the White House, and unlimited check bouncing privileges came into sharper and sharper focus. "How can I help?"

A little later I walked into the Daniels Den, an overly cute name for the local campaign HQ. I was met by Skip, the owner of the excited phone voice.

"Glad you could join the cause," said Skip, pumping my hand like a recalcitrant water pump handle in West Texas.

A poster on the wall had Bob and Heather waving to adoring crowds. I could use an adoring crowd or two, I thought to myself. Was that Heather's hand poking into Bob's back and manipulating his every move?  No, that was a leftover image from Nancy and Ron. I wondered what type of monster data center they had for me to organize.

We stopped at an old PC XT clone with a monochrome monitor and a noisy hard disk of perhaps 20MB. Floppies (I hadn't seen a 5.25 inch 360k diskette in quite a while) cascaded onto the floor on the right of the machine, and sheets of paper with campaign donor names and amounts were quasi-stacked on the left.

Skip beamed at me with the proud look of ownership normally reserved for Yuppies showing you their first BMW. "Here's our 'Computer Center', all ready for you to organize. First we need a listing of all donors by amount given and cross-referenced by voting precinct. Can you write a program to do that by this afternoon?"

I could barely hear him, for all the noise of my expectations crashing down. The limo drove off, the staff was in mutiny, and my overdrawn checks were returned 'Not Sufficient Funds'. My lunch at the White House became a hot dog on the street from the pushcart called the White Horse down on Main and Lamar.

I turned to Skip. "You said there was a data center. A ten year old XT is not a data center. I'm here to design large national networks and organize huge computer centers."

"We'll leave that to the computer nerds in Washington," said Skip. "We're in the trenches. Can't you smell the excitement?"

"That's not what I smell, Skip," I said as I walked out. "Excitement smells much better than this. I smell politics."

James: An election was underway at this time, and my friend Jon Knauf built most of the network for Ross Perot's Dallas campaign headquarters. Where was Perot Systems? Getting in Jon's way, and proposing ideas that were far beyond the budget. Jon asked me one or two quick questions about some NetWare to Unix integration details, so I can claim credit for helping Ross lose. But I can't claim credit for Ross himself. He has to take that blame himself.