Send me an absentee ballot s'il vous plait
A week or two ago I was ogling a full-page, color portrait of French politician Segolene Royale in Time magazine. My thought: Darn! Why can't I vote for her? Yes, I judge people by their appearance, and the lissome, 53 -year-old Royale looks like a million francs -- after the devaluation.
It doesn't hurt that she's super-qualified to make her run for the French presidency. She attended the right schools, she has won re election several times, and has served in the French cabinet. She has that je ne sais quoi. The BBC calls her a "mysterious mademoiselle," which she may be, technically, although she is an unmarried mother of four.
Isn't it depressing to think that in two weeks we're going to have to pull the lever for Little Ms. Hairspray from the North Shore, Kerry Healey , or for a smooth-talking, corporate shill like Deval Patrick ? How come all the fun candidates are plying their trade elsewhere? I don't mean oddities like media darling/drugstore cowboy Kinky Friedman , who claims to be running for the Texas governorship. I mean people like Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski , the identical twin brothers who are running Poland.
The twins first came to public notice in 1962 , as the cute, 13-year-old tous led-haired co stars of the hit movie "The Two Who Stole the Moon ." Active in anti- communist politics, the twins eventually drifted to the right and founded their own national, conservative political party. The Kaczynskis are no longer cute, but they are still interchangeable, which must come in handy for boring state functions.
Lech: Oh, God. Condi Rice is in town again. Another dull dinner.
Jaroslaw: Ha, ha. You're the head of state. You have to go.
Lech: You're the prime minister! How about assuming some responsibility?
Jaroslaw: OK, OK. I'll do the dinner. I'll wear your red sash -- she'll never know the difference.
For the record, president Lech has a small mole on the left of his nose, which prime minister Jaroslaw lacks.
"Devoutly Catholic, distrustful of foreigners, manifestly uncomfortable with the idea of gay rights, they often appear only to trust each other," the online magazine First Post says of my boys. The Kaczynskis "loathe trave ling abroad, take all their holidays in Poland with [their mother] Jadwiga ... and appear to have little regard for anything non-Polish." What's not to like?
The Pole with a mole distrusts pan-Europe-ism, and why shouldn't he? The European Parliament harbors all manner of political flotsam, including a woman I would vote for in a heartbeat, Hungary's Livia Jaroka . Possessed with Segolene-level presentation skills, Ms. Jaroka claims to represent the Roma, or Romany, or Gypsies.
I have always had a soft spot for the Gypsies. My great-uncle was supposedly an expert in the Roma language, and when I was a little boy, my parents tried to sell me to the Gypsies more than once. All in good fun, hahahahaha. If the Gypsies had come up with enough cigarette cartons for barter, I'd probably be a columnist in a Bulgarian encampment now. But I'll save those memories for therapy.
Jaroka is quite candid about how most Gypsies occupy themselves: "The work that they are doing is usually black market work." Another member of the European Parliament, a television presenter, as the British call them, has been inveighing against Gypsies in Great Britain. The Geraldo-like Robert Kilroy-Silk has exposed the Gypsies' shocking, "apartheid-like practice of requiring non-Gypsies visiting Gypsy camps to use segregated toilet facilities," according to Wikipedia.
Kilroy-Silk has said, cryptically, that "what Gypsies are getting away with in certain parts of the country is totally wrong and must be stopped immediately." But no one knows what he is talking about. I am not voting for him.
The faraway politician I'd most like to vote for is the embattled prime minister of Hungary, Ferenc Gyurcsany . Just last month a tape recording surfaced on which Gyurcsany admitted to political associates: "We have obviously lied throughout the past 18 to 24 months. It was perfectly clear that what we were saying was not true."
Gyurcsany is in big trouble and may be out of a job soon. But just think: If Dick Cheney had spoken this candidly, I would have voted for him, too.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
