by Bryan Kelly

I AM GOING door-to-door gathering signatures for a candidate (who isn’t me) to run for City Council in the partisan election.

At least, I’m trying to gather signatures. Often, no one’s home when I visit, or their hiding spots are too good. I’ve given most of my pitches to irate dogs barking demonically through side light windows.

That so few of their owners are present might be good news. One mustn’t forget that irate dogs are preferable to irate human beings. A dog can be placated with a treat; but there are stricter rules governing human patronage.

As dogs hate mailmen, most people loathe politicians. The sight and smell of one enrages them—and this holds true for local, state and federal elections.

Just when we were starting to feel good—just when the weather was turning, the sun was coming out, faces were emerging from parkas, hands from gloves, disused cigarette butts from melting piles of snow—hopeful politicos have appeared on the pavement.

The sidewalks these candidates are thumping are the same thoroughfares that some of them promise to clear of snow and ice as soon as they get in office, using money wasted on some other, less “basic,” endeavor.

It’s a fine argument to lean on in March. But come August, and primary election season, few voters will be excited by the promise of snow removal. Around that time, it would be wiser to propose that the city shall remove foreign dog excrement from your front lawn.

It’s strange to represent someone aside from myself on the door-knocking circuit. I feel much more tentative cradling the delicate reputation of someone else than I ever did when it was my own character I was mishandling.

I’m used to making up answers about my political views on the fly, and adapting them as I see fit. But views are more difficult to articulate when they belong to someone else. The safe bet is to defer, and reassure whomever is listening that my candidate, whatever he or she believes, is “a good Democrat.”

Door-to-door campaigning is the joy of politics—for the underdog. He or she is not responsible for the present, fallen state of affairs. Therefore, he or she can offer to citizens a sympathetic ear, an indignant shake of the head, a tissue and a bag in which to throw the used ones.

Indeed, whatever grieves a person, this can be the very issue that inspired the underdog to get into politics. And once the individual’s grievance has been discovered and lamented, the outsider can weave a tapestry of promises so intricate you could decorate your house with it.

The established politico, on the other hand, has nothing but apologies to look forward to—apologies and lies. Fortunately, it is good sport to lie once in office. One becomes much more well-informed about why things are proceeding so poorly once one is in the seat of government. I imagine that the county office was created just so another layer of bureaucracy can be blamed for the mishandling of priorities.

The good politicos have learned to take a punch and remain standing; indeed, to live as a punching dummy, the irritating kind that, once struck, tips over until it is parallel to the ground, before swinging back up again (on the offensive).

What the gumshoe politico must adopt in order to survive is what makes that dummy so tenacious—that is, a skin of rubber, a vacuous trunk of air, and a foundation of heavy sand.

It is just this tenacity, I’ve heard, that paves the way to success. Politics is a young person’s game. Getting involved at an early age means outliving the incumbent by and by.

More than half of political life is showing up—and this percentage is achieved over time, in 10 percent spurts. The door-to-door campaign is integral to making those small gains. Your regular appearance on a person’s doorstep will go from being an intrusion, to an encumbrance, to an inconvenience, to a disruption, to a difficulty, and finally, to a bad habit. To win, you must infect your target audience with Stockholm Syndrome.

It is a wonder more mailmen do not run for office.

In time, the door-to-door campaign will almost surely be replaced by some technological innovation that is a thousand times more efficient at gathering information about the public’s wants and needs—and is otherwise bloodless and dreary by comparison. (This, perhaps, is the function MLive already serves.)

Indeed, if politics weren’t the very epicenter and breeding ground of regulation, the whole business might have been replaced already. We could govern ourselves just fine via Facebook, liking good initiatives and scorning bad ones in the comments section.

In the meantime, door-knocking is the best tool we have to battle the public’s loathing of politicians. The enemy, of course, isn’t scorn, but indifference, because indifference favors the incumbent—which is why I always vote for the underdog, and why I see it as no time wasted to go door-to-door on that underdog’s behalf. So long as I don’t encounter any actual dogs, my health should remain intact.