The Cat in the Hat for President

by Robert Coover

  “Perhaps.” Clark paused, almost as though he hadn’t considered my objection before. “As a famous political analyst, Mr. Brown, what would you say was a politician’s greatest asset?”

  I paused. In my perception of a field of charged vectors, I tend to deny hierarchies of power. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “Ambiguity, I guess. Meaningful or potent ambiguity.”

  “Wonderful!” said Clark, and again that glimmer of a smile flickered for an instant on his pale face. “And what do we know about the Cat in the Hat?”

  It had been some time since I’d read the stories to my grandkids. “Two hundred twenty-three different words,” I said. It was the kind of thing I’d be apt to remember. Clark said nothing and I didn’t like the silence, so I added: “There were these two kids by the window. And the Cat let these two Things out of a box and they flew some kites around in the house making one helluva mess.” My grandkids had got a big charge out of that. “The Cat cleaned it up with that machine he used today.” When my grandkids tried the kite act, we didn’t have a machine. If they’d been my kids, I would’ve tanned their fannies, but what can a grandfather do? “Then, in the second one, he eats a cake in the bathtub and leaves a pink ring.” My grandkids wanted to know why you couldn’t see the Cat’s peenie while he was standing in the tub. They didn’t ask that about any of the other pictures. “Before he’s done, everything in sight is pink.”

  “That’s very good, Mr. Brown,” said Clark. A pun on catechism occurred to me, but I swallowed it down. “And this time his solution, after running through an alphabet of cats all residing in his own hat, is—”

  “Voom.”

  “Voom indeed!”

  “The Bomb, as Joe has it.”

  “Yes, it’s true,” said Clark. “For Joe, the two stories are parables of the foibles of diplomacy, the first being about the effectiveness of air power, followed by technological recovery, the second about the eradication of the, uh, Red menace by atomic power.”

  “This is what you call freeing the mind.”

  Again that flicker. Clark’s moods were subtle, but I was beginning to appreciate them. “Any dramatic change of the rules of the game, Mr. Brown, is by definition a radical action, and so attracts radicals of all stripes. At any rate, we are speaking as practical politicians now, Mr. Brown, and my purpose is merely to demonstrate the Cat’s essential ambiguity, and thus his electoral power.”

  It was my turn to smile. “And Ned?” Not the question I wanted to ask, of course, but I knew he’d give me his own version willy-nilly, and I had but to wait.

  “He’s not a reader. He probably has the stories by hearsay only. I think he was surprised to discover this is a real cat. The technological solutions impress him. He doesn’t believe in the Cat’s magic, just a lot of clever hocus-pocus as far as he’s concerned, but he’s a pragmatist and understands the appeal magic has on the populace. If nothing else, it’s entertaining. He sees the Cat as an exciting personality and believes the Cat can win. He’s politically inexperienced, he hasn’t done anything except sell shoes in St. Louis until now, but he’s therefore free of all the myths and pseudo-realities of politics. He thinks the Cat is about to make history and he wants to be in on it.”

  “I thought history was done for.”

  “All of us have much to learn, Mr. Brown. Step at a time, please. Already Ned is approaching the idea of the Cat as agent of the absurd. Do you know what he said to me this evening? He said, ‘You know, Clark, if you can accept that damned Cat, you can accept almost anything... even the universe.’ Even the universe, Mr. Brown!”

  “While it lasts. Voom!”

  “Ah, that troubles you still! But remember, Mr. Brown: ambiguity! Ambiguity! Why must it be nuclear power? All the Cat says about it is that it is too small to see yet enormously effective. Why not Reason? Or Love? God? Perception of Infinity and Zero, or the Void? It rhymes with Womb and Tomb: Being and Nonbeing. It suggests Doom or Bloom, Vow or—”

  “Vomit,” I suggested. “Maybe it’s a great emetic.”

  Clark never batted an eye. “True,” he replied in all seriousness. “Or simply OM, the final linguistic reduction of the universe. And then again, it may only suggest some hidden latent power. Beyond the alphabet but in his Hat. An accent on Inner Space, Mr. Brown, a return to racial sanity. Voom may simply be the reality principle!”

  “Well, all that’s very cute, Clark,” I said, “but there’s a lot of destructiveness in those Cat stories. Think of those—”

  “But what does it matter that there’s destructiveness, Mr. Brown? The question is rather: what is being destroyed? The Cat breaks the rules of the house, even the laws of probability, but what is destroyed except nay-saying itself, authority, social habit, the law of the mother, who, through violence in the name of love, keeps order in this world, this household? Ah no, mess-making is a prerequisite to creation, Mr. Brown. All new worlds are built upon the ruins of the old.”

  “Bump, thump,” I said, recalling some of the lines. My opposition, nevertheless, was waning.

  “And jump, Mr. Brown! The leap into the future! Jump!”

  I sighed. “I’m too old to jump, Clark. Or should I say, too plump in the rump? But I’m not young enough to stop you all by myself either. What are your terms?”

  “You’re not listening, Mr. Brown. There are no terms. Take, if you like, the existential perspective of your friend Governor Sam. It is happening, Mr. Brown. Are you with us or not?”

  Revolt, derring-do, mess-making are not my way. I liked my mother. But Clark was right; I saw all the vectors again: it was indeed happening. And anyway, the Cat, I recalled, always cleaned up his own messes. After the liberating infractions, the old rules were restored—reinforced, in fact. Appreciated. “Okay,” I said, and poured a long one. I needed it badly. “Here’s to the Cat who knows where it’s at,” I proposed, meaning whomever you please.

  The Cat in the Hat was nominated by acclamation before the completion of the first ballot the next day as our party’s candidate for the next President of the United States of America. There was some prior debate about the Vice-Presidency. It seemed that the Cat’s supporters were prepared to let me have my way in the matter. But I discouraged Riley and Boone from getting mixed up in it—to tell the truth, they’d both started to get a little wacky themselves and broke into wild laughter every time I mentioned the Presidency, but they willingly went along with me, backed the Cat, and withdrew from the game. Finally, we settled on Sam. The way things turned out, I wish I’d talked him out of it, too, but at the time he was too obviously the right choice.

  Actually, the nomination and balloting procedures that final day were orderly, just about like any other National Convention, and in spite of the coon odor, I was even beginning to feel at home in the hall again, but then the Cat came on to accept the nomination. He arrived on roller skates, holding up a cake on a rake. On, or in, the cake sat a goat wearing a coat, an umbrella balanced on its nose. On the tip of the umbrella wobbled a fishbowl, with a fish inside that was crying:

  “Stop it! Stop it!

  I will fall!

  I do not like this!

  Not at all!”

  The delegates cheered madly. I shuddered, expecting the worst. Though admittedly, the worst could not be as bad as it would have been before my capitulation to Clark. I shuddered, that is to say, and giggled a bit at the same time. Certainly, we had one helluva candidate. The Cat was now doing a handstand on the skates, balancing the whole assemblage on his toes. He lifted one hand. Then he lifted the other. Down with a crash came Cat, Hat, rake, cake, goat, coat, umbrella, and bowl. The fishbowl hit the platform like a tidal wave. Suddenly the entire hall was engulfed. I was swimming for my life, far below the surface. Which was a miracle in itself, since I don’t know how to swim. I don’t even take deep baths. People float
ed by, some struggling, some laughing, some waving, some weeping, some winking, all making little bubbles that turtles, eels, and schools of peculiar fish swam through. Chairs passed. On one sat a little old lady delegate from New Hampshire, knitting as always. She glanced up, scowled at me over her spectacles. Placards. TV cameras. Ned, upside down, tangled in phone cords. Raccoons. Little Cat Hats. Riley passed, astride a catskinned coed: he tipped his hat politely and gave the victory sign.

  I surfaced, gasping for breath. The goat bobbed by, riding his cake. I grabbed for the cake to save myself, got only a fistful of soggy frosting. I was going under again. My entire life passed, in melodramatic accord with that old wives’ tale, before my eyes. It was full of brown suits, charred hamburger, political polls, income tax forms, exchanged gratuities, and unreadable newspapers: so dull, so insane, I spluttered, “I consider it a great honor!” and sank away. At which point, the fish, now grown to Leviathan size, appeared and swallowed me up.

  I was not alone in the belly of the fish. The whole damned National Convention was in there. Except the Cat and Clark. I was looking for Clark. This was too goddamned much. I’d nearly died. I was soaked, nauseous, exhausted, terrorized, enraged. “Clark!” I screamed. “Where the hell are you?” That vicious bastard. “Get us outa here, Clark!” My voice echoed and resounded in the fish’s belly, mingling with the moans and cries of others.

  A catskinned coed, hair dribbling down her face and cattail adroop, fell on my shoulder weeping. “There, there,” I said. I patted her wet bottom. I began to feel a little better.

  “Maybe he’s Jesus,” she whimpered.

  “Now, now,” I said, “we’ll be all right.”

  All of us, even the raccoons, stayed huddled close together, grateful for each other’s presence. A soft lamentation went up: what to do? who can save us? Sam remembered that in the morning TV cartoons they always used pepper. But nobody had any pepper. Then I recalled my crack about the great emetic. “Hey, Voom!” I said. “Voom!” They all picked it up. “Voom!” they shouted. “Voom! VOOM!” The gates opened and we spewed forth.

  I was rushing through the water at a tremendous speed. Luckily, we were all expelled outward in diverging directions: collision would have been fatal. I slowed, breathless, knocked up against a glass wall. I’d been clinging to my catskinned coed all the while, frantically patting her bottom to reassure myself. Or at least I’d thought it was hers—I was distressed to discover that in reality it belonged to my candidate Riley. I apologized confusedly. He tipped his straw politely and bobbed away.

  I stared out through the glass wall. We seemed to be in the Convention hall, which was now enormously expanded—some trick, maybe, of the glass wall. Certainly, unless my eyes deceived me, it was concave. We seemed high up. I tried to make out what was just below us. It looked for all the world like a huge umbrella. And beneath that: the face of the Cat in the Hat grinning up at us. Swimmingly, monstrously distorted. We were, I realized, in the fishbowl. “Hang on!” I shouted to myself and held my nose. And, sure enough, we fell.

  We washed up on our own Convention hall benches. I seemed to hear the Cat’s voice behind me the while:

  “Now you see

  What I can do!

  I can give you

  Something new!

  Something true

  And impromptu!

  I can give you

  A new view!”

  “Up yours,” said I, as I collapsed, gasping, into my chair. Phoo! Another round of that and I’m done for. It was about then I began thinking of getting out of politics. It wasn’t the last time I was to have such thoughts. I felt my clothes; they were dry. I glanced around at the others. Everyone in a state of bug-eyed shock. That old New Hampshire grandmother was still knitting away, but she’d lost her yarn. Click, click. There was a moment of general recognition, a Convention-wide blink. Faint foolish smiles. When, now warily, we turned once more toward the Cat in the Hat, he was exiting, balanced on a ball, juggling hopelessly infatuated catskinned coeds. Ned and Joe led us in singing “The Cat in the Hat Campaign Song” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” We had our candidates. The campaign was on.

  That night, I found a fish in my pocket. Dead, I think. Anyway, I flushed it down the toilet. I was not just a little bit disgruntled, nor was I the only one. The Cat’s contemptuous travesty of an acceptance of a Presidential nomination by one of the nation’s two major political parties had shocked us all, even his wildest supporters. Oh, we were quick to rationalize it, give the world at large a happy line, and all the old Jonah jokes got revived, but there was the gloomy cautionary stink of seaweed in the air. The Cat was entertaining maybe, exciting, liberating, even prodigious—but he was also, obscurely, a threat. Dangerous, yes, he was. He seemed to be in control of himself, but who could follow him without great personal peril? A whole nation in a fish’s belly? No, we were in trouble. We all squeezed the Me-You! hats merrily and, with enthusiasm and the stirring sense of a great impending drama, went to bat for the Cat in the Hat, but, alone, we’d all found dead fish in our pockets and handbags.

  I explained this that night to Clark. “Any great liberation is always accompanied by a vague sense of loss,” he replied. “The structures we build to protect us from reality are insane, Mr. Brown, but they are also comforting. A false comfort, to be sure, but their loss is momentarily frightening.”

  “It’s not going to get a lot of votes, Clark.”

  “You’re still concerned about the elections, Mr. Brown.”

  “Hell, yes! Aren’t you?”

  Clark stared at me. I grew uneasy. “I believe, simply, that we live in an age of darkness, that humanity, with all efficiency and presumed purpose, has gone mad. What we must do, Mr. Brown, is help all men once more to experience reality concretely, fully, wholly, without mystification, free from mirages, unencumbered by pseudo-systems. If we succeed at that, don’t you see, elections may no longer be relevant.”

  “That’s what the goddamn fish’s belly was all about, hunh?”

  “Extremity is often a great catalyst, Mr. Brown. As a practicing politician, you must know that better than I.”

  I remembered the catskinned coed’s sleek wet bottom, her warm tears, the sense of emptiness and community, the cavernous hollow of the fish’s innards. À la Walt Disney, I realized, having cleaned a few fish in my time. Also, now that I thought about it, there was light in there. Where did it come from? Well, it didn’t matter, it was a great show, I had to admit it, I’d never see things the same way again, find your soul in the Cat’s fishbowl, and briefly, before I remembered its sliminess, I even appreciated the dead fish I’d found in my pocket. Then I recalled that old lady clicking her empty knitting needles. “It’s a pipe dream, Clark. People aren’t built for it. Call it insanity, if you like. I call it survival.”

  “But who is surviving, Mr. Brown? We are engaged in brutal wars, we live in the shadow of thermonuclear world-death, we continue to exist by virtue of dead forms, cut off from all life, from all being, as much murderers as survivors . . . and then we all die anyway.”

  I stared at Clark. He was intense, assertive, ugly. He radiated concern and engagement. And he knew too much about loneliness. “Say, listen, Clark, tell me: do you have a single goddamn friend in the world?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Brown. You.” I was sorry I had asked. “You’re not quitting, are you?”

  I sighed. I was close to it that night. “No, but, nutty or not, I’d sure as hell like to win this election.”

  “Who says we won’t?”

  “Well, I tell you, it’d sure help if you could get the Cat to act just a little more . . . well . . . normal.”

  That incipient smile flickered over Clark’s face. I grinned openly in return, went out for a couple of platefuls of hamburger steak, done to a bloodless crisp. I was starved.
/>
  The Cat was a phenomenal campaigner . . . if that was what he was doing. Tireless, astounding, unpredictable, he was literally everywhere at once, plummeting out of airplanes, umbrella for a parachute, over Butte and Baltimore, popping up out of sewers in Hyannis and Williamsburg, whistle-stopping from Cucamonga to Santa Monica, flying kites in Houston and dropping confetti on Bedford-Stuyvesant, setting up a freak show in the valleys at Gettysburg, bathing in the Chicago River and brushing his teeth in Hot Springs, peddling boxes and foxes to passersby in Old Rampart, Alaska, giving away life insurance in San Francisco, eating grits in Spokane and knishes in Biloxi. He juggled live bears in YeIIowstone, spaceships in Florida, dialects in New York. He fell off Pike’s Peak, doing a handstand on a cane and a vane, and washed up on a door with an oar off Kailua Bay, singing Happy Birthday songs.

  But if he was unpredictable, he was also unmanageable. I made the mistake the first couple of weeks of arranging speaking engagements for him—the Cat missed them all, popping up at the Opponent’s rallies instead. The Opponent, political genius and campaign veteran though he was, was at as much of a loss as Boone or I had been at our Convention. I admit I was secretly pleased to see the sonuvabitch discomfited, but I couldn’t go along with Clark’s claim that the Cat’s goofy gambits were exposing the madness of normalcy. Okay, I realize the Opponent—Mr. America, his party’s buttons and posters called him—was guilty of all the old clichés about “free enterprise” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” and “unalienable rights” and “the American Way of Life” and “defense of freedom” and “government is a business and should be run like one,” all the usual crap, but what the hell, that’s pragmatic politics, that’s winning elections, that’s talking the tribal language, and it’s not what Clark liked to call “our national depravity.” And sure, the Cat’s playback of these old saws in his singsong ditties did make them sound pretty nutty. “This Wee of Life is rife with strife!” he’d singalong. And: