LUDIC LOG

THE NOMINATION

January: Senator Ape's candidacy gains momentum as hardliners within his party claim that a gorilla cannot be president of the United States. In a rousing speech at a campaign appearance in Raleigh, NC, Senator Ape answers these claims, noting that he is 37 years old, was born in the United States, and has lived in the San Diego Zoo for over 15 years, meeting the residency requirements. Through his sign-language interpreter, Henry Kalimba, he says "America is about opportunity, not exclusion; inclusiveness, not elitism; and your place in the American Dream, not your place on the evolutionary ladder. While they play the race card, I'm the wild card in this race." While his opponents claim that 'gorilla' is a species, not a race, and that what he actually said was 'Ape want hat funny water drink many', his poll numbers continue to rise.

February: Senator Ape participates in a lively debate with the party's three other leading candidates; when the cameras stop rolling, two have been hospitalized, and Gov. Herzog is stymied by the leading candidate's response to his question "Where is an 800-pound gorilla going to get the money to pay for his proposed increases in the education budget?"

March: Senator Ape claims through Henry Kabila to have the necessary delegates for his party's nomination, or, as he puts it, 'Ape get man sash good yes?'. Sensing a shift in the political landscape, party officials scramble to send appropriate speakers to the convention in Denver, but are only able to find three chimpanzees, an orangutan and a tamarin who switches his affiliation from the Reform Party.

THE CAMPAIGN

May: Senator Ape's steadily rising poll numbers become a cause for concern with the incumbent President. Attempting to cash in on shifting trends in voter demographics, he dismisses his Secretary of Transportation and replaces him with a macaque, but the strategy backfires when the new officeholder is discovered to have plagiarized a number of his position papers from various articles in Ape Fancier, American Monkey Enthusiast, and The New York Times Review of Books. Rumors that the president will nominate a gibbon for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court turn out to be only partially true; in fact, the nominee turns out to be a federal judge named Gibbon.

June: Senator Ape says he won't make any hasty decisions regarding a running mate. Although a moderate midwestern governor is one of the leading candidates, the nominee says his choice "could be anyone, even a silverback".

September: Senator Ape is hurt in the polls by a series of devastating attack ads by the president, in which long-circulating rumors of his marital infidelity and kinky sex habits are obliquely referred to. Holding a nationally televised "pondside chat", the candidate refutes the answers the rumors one by one; he produces the "woman in question", revealing that she is, in fact, a leading primate researcher. She denies having had a sexual relationship with Senator Ape, but admits that she did videotape him copulating with his wife a number of times for research purposes. While it is feared that this will hurt the candidate, the public turns out to be highly enthusiastic, and a National Geographic special featuring the footage becomes a best-seller.

October: With a seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls, Senator Ape makes it a close race when his rebuttals in the last of three televised debates with his opponent consist entirely of flinging clumps of feces.

THE FIRST 100 DAYS

January: Announcing a "cabinet that looks like the monkey house", President Ape angers some longtime party members by selecting for high-level positions based not on experience or seniority, but on their willingness to withstand a vicious beating and then display their genitals to him. After the selection of a capucin monkey as the Secretary of State, however, the party falls into line and follows the procedure with enthusiasm, averting a public relations disaster.

March: President Ape's first major confrontation with a hostile Senate comes when his health care bill is shot down despite a great deal of vehement screeching and hurling of chairs. The controversial rider that would provide government-mandated tire swings is thought to be the breaking point for fiscally conservative moderates.

April: With the economy in a tailspin, President Ape launches a surprise invasion of the nation of Ecuador, citing evidence of Communist insurgency and the presence of terrorist training camps. The president's critics note that Ecuador is the world's leading exporter of bananas.