Trillin on Lugar

Going through more stuff, I found a clipping from about 10 years ago that I thought I'd share here. It's from (The Nation? The New Yorker? The New Republic? One of those N magazines.) Calvin Trillin wrote this piece of poetry regarding Richard Lugar's unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in 1996. Mr. Lugar got single-digit poll numbers for having dared to suggest that preventing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists might take precedence over discerning who in the Clinton entourage slept with whom.

Lugar as Candidate

by Calvin Trillin

Poor Lugar's problem's quite specific:
The man is simply soporific.
His speeches, well prepared and deep,
Affect one much like counting sheep.
Although his résumé is great, he
Can really make your eyelids weighty.

His ads now say that he's the guy
We want in charge if bad types try
To do atomic terror here.
He may be right, except it's clear
If Dick is Prez -- make no mistake --
We'll need The Bomb to stay awake.