MISSOURI WATCH: BEST OF TIMES FOR MISSOURI POLITICS

I don't want to spoil anyone's fun (I wish as much could be said for the people who are already advertising gifts for every member of the family at Christmas) but in case you haven't noticed, your friendly neighborhood politician is walking around these days without a care in his or her head. If you're not an avid reader of the Farmer's Almanac, this is not only the start of autumn, the end of summer and the post-Labor Day season, it is the time of the year that politicians all over Missouri consider to be the best moments in their life.

Missouri politicians are not indifferent to the way the political winds are blowing, nor are they oblivious to the fact that for the next three and a half months they can walk through life without looking over their shoulder for someone who wants their job. But this happens to be the only moment in a span of two or four years that politicians can enjoy the great blessings of citizenship that you and I take for granted.

Not only is your state representative or state senator or congressman/woman or state auditor momentarily unopposed, he or she doesn't have to beg dollars from snarly constituents nor contend with the idiocy of campaign managers and volunteer workers who offer ludicrous advice 24 hours a day, none of which is based on either experience or common sense. Much has been written about mothers-in-law, but believe me, their ability to get on your nerves can't hold a candle to an expert who has been paid a king's ransom to see you through the forthcoming campaign. Listening to these people babble on about campaign practices and tactics is not unlike listening to a South St. Louisan of German descent extol the virtues of bratwurst.

Our politician in question doesn't have to answer a roll call for months, doesn't have to appease a constituent who demands that he introduce a bill to prevent a business competitor from underpricing his merchandise or eat a single meal in a capital city in which cooks specialize in preparing food with great globs of unrefined lard. Now this may not seem to be a big deal to most citizens, which only demonstrates how little regard we Missourians pay our poor officeholders.

Not only are the soon-to-be public servants freed of the numerous obstacles they will face over an 18-month period (which, when you think of it, is like being sick during two continuous pregnancies) but they can actually skip tomorrow night's PTA meeting and probably no one will even miss them. Let the candidate miss one when there's a legislative session going on, and suddenly he has committed a blasphemous act of official dereliction that voters view as serious as treason.

A politician's life is not all skittles and gravy, even during this brief moment of electoral elation, for there are other forces in society that exist, day in and day out, week in and week out, that gnaw at a candidate's inner peace. There is the neighborhood ideologue, with a dedication to the cause of some godforsaken crusade that borders on the outer fringes of sheer lunacy, who is guaranteed - to be a pain-in-the-neck regardless of the season. Politicians of all faiths and beliefs know these people only too well. Perhaps their cause is lower taxes for people who breed rare birds or increased pension benefits for those who accidentally lost their big toe in a lawn mowing incident or those who follow a more punitive path and insist that all Irish descendants whose fathers left the 01' Sod during the Great Potato Famine should be denied veterans' benefits. Politicians large and small can attest to the ability of seemingly normal-looking constituents to dream up the weirdest ideas for future statutes, and can further attest to the inability of these constituents to understand the difficulty of enacting even sensible, intelligent legislation, much less mental effluvium that doesn't stand a ghost of being enacted, even in the geriatric wards of a mental hospital.

So relax, taxpayers, and let your beleaguered public servants enjoy this brief moment of inner-and-outer peace, this short spell between campaigning and legislating, this respite from undergoing the threats, dementias, curses and insults of those who wouldn't have their job if their lives depended on it, this vacation from having to beg for enough money to drive to the next campaign rally which will be attended by no more than half a dozen disinterested citizens.

Give your hometown politician a broad smile the next time you pass on the way to the post off ice. Just don't smile too broadly or he'll suspect you're planning to file against him at the very next election.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.