Posted by Jim at August 26th, 2005

With all the recent attention to Pat Robertson’s ability to say mind-bogglingly stupid things on television, I’ve been reminded of his brief, unsuccessful bid for the presidency.

Robertson won some primaries (though George H. W. Bush ultimately won the presidency) and there was a point in the process where he had momentum. I didn’t ever expect that he would win, but, I didn’t expect that he would get as far as he had either. Anything seemed possible.

It was 1987-88. I was in my first year of college. It was not long after the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert sex scandals. Nor was it particularly long after Gary Hart’s spectacular flameout in the Democratic primaries (I seem to remember that he dared reporters to follow him in order to show he wasn’t involved in scandal–and they did–catching him with Donna Rice).

One evening, I was up late listening to the college radio station (which in a case of exceptionally bad judgement sometimes allowed me to dejay). Liz, a person I knew through Opus (Hope’s literary magazine), was doing her show.

It was late enough that returns had come in from that night’s primary and she was talking about it. Pat Robertson had won and she was not happy.

“Women,” she said, “someone needs to sleep with that man.”

It seemed a lot funnier to me in that moment then it seems now, but, I still smile a little when I remember it. To judge from the past week, there’s a great deal of joke fodder left in Pat Robertson.