He showed up a day early, but considering it’s been six years since we last heard from him, we were just glad to see him.
As longtime readers may recall, Loof Lirpa is the formerly reclusive inventor and farmer who lives in the Danby area of Jefferson County. The last two times we wrote about him, he’d just had a couple of catastrophic business failures.
The first was his notion to breed cattle with short legs on one side so they could graze comfortably on Jefferson County’s steep terrain. Disaster struck when he tried to herd them to market on flat ground.
More recently, he tried to breed an egg-laying rooster to make the chicken population more efficient and productive. That one didn’t end well, either, when his Vitalis-and-ball bearings formula for converting the critters into egg layers brought on a ruinous lawsuit from People for the Ethical Treatment of Roosters (PETR).
But Loof Lirpa, backwards and forward, is no quitter.
He came by the office to announce that he is willing to put all those decades of plucky determination up for hire by the American people.
“I’m no fool – I’m a Loof,” he said. “It’s time I gave back to this great country that’s done so much for me. And the state of our nation and this race for its highest office is embarrassing our country. Because of that, I am declaring myself a candidate for president of these United States.”
Between his genetic experiments, Loof said he has always been keenly interested in politics.
“And isn’t that natural?” Loof asked. “Look where I’m from – Jefferson County, Missouri. Bill Bradley, from good old Crystal City, ran for president in 2000. Jay Nixon, from good old De Soto, is governor and – before that Ferguson trouble, at least – was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate.
“Why not me?”
Why not, indeed?
Just as he tried to make hens and roosters interchangeable, Loof is taking a flexible approach to his bid for the White House – he’s willing to carry the standard for either party.
“I’m not a Democrat and I’m not a Republican,” Loof said. “I’m an American.”
Besides, Lirpa figures, there’s a good chance that at least one of the major party conventions could be thrown into chaos by the lack of a consensus candidate. It might even happen to both.
If that occurs, America could turn its lonely eyes to Loof. It just might welcome a little common sense in the White House, similar to the only time a Missourian became president. He took over after a traumatic time, too – World War II.
Lirpa doesn’t claim to be Harry S Truman, but he does subscribe to some of the same philosophies as the man from Independence.
He doesn’t have to shove himself out in front of everybody else. For example, when he goes deer hunting with his pals, Loof lets his friends have the best shots. If they miss, Loof usually won’t.
“The buck stops here,” he winked.
With the craziness and nastiness in this year’s presidential sweepstakes that seem to dive to a new low every week, it might be time to go with a dark horse.
“Well,” Loof allowed. “They won’t get any darker than me.”
Dark horse or no, Loof figures that the White House could use a good dose of horse sense from a man who knows what it’s like to get his hands dirty, a man who has struggled at times and known failure, a man with grit who will stick to the job until it’s done.
“The main thing is, if the mule kicks you and you go down, you get up and dust yourself off,” he said. “Maybe you give him one back if that’s all he understands.”
Loof paused for a minute.
“Well, after the trouble I had with those rooster people, maybe I’d better not get the mule lobby riled up,” he said. “Still, I grew up on a farm and I understand critters a whole lot better than those city folks who start those wild-eyed animal rights outfits. Most of them wouldn’t know a jackass from a three-toed sloth.”
And that’s the problem in a nutshell, Loof maintains – identifying the jackass.
“People today don’t know what they don’t know,” he said. “Some of the worst are experts on everything. Just ask ’em.”
Leadership, he said, does not come from a checklist.
“It’s not about who has the biggest mouth, or the nastiest insults or the biggest bank account,” Loof said. “It’s not about who has the prettiest spouse. And it sure oughtn’t to be about who can raise and spend the most money in an election.
“It’s got to be about character and honesty,” he said. “I’d want a president who I’d be proud to have as a neighbor, someone who’d be true and reliable, who’d help you when you needed a hand instead of calling you names for being in the fix you’re in. Someone who’d tell you the truth, even if you didn’t always want to hear it.
“That’s what we need in a president.”
Yes, Loof. It is.
