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An election story that sounds strangely familiar

To the editor:

There’s another presidential candidate you may not have heard about. His name is Harold Clastrup, a former Secretary of the Interior. During his time in office, a dam being constructed by the Department in Montana collapsed, killing several people and destroying a number of homes in the valley below. It turned out later that the dam was being built to provide water to some arid lands that had been bought by friends of Clastrup’s. When asked about the cause of the dam’s collapse, Clastrup noted that the contractor had some misspelled words on the environmental permits and therefore it had nothing to do with the Department. “It wasn’t our fault,” he added.

Some time later, a newspaper released a story that Clastrup had a secret file of the competitive bids on several Interior lands up for an auction in which some of his friends were expected to participate. When confronted with this story, including computer images of his file, Clastrup said he knew nothing about them.

In spite of all this, Clastrup has significant support in an unusual voting bloc. See, Clastrup is six feet, seven inches tall and when TV reporters have questioned his supporters about his campaign, the usual response is, “It would be great to have a really tall person in the White House for the first time.”

Sound crazy? Funny, the story sounds vaguely familiar to me, for some reason.

John Brittain

Lewistown

Editor’s note: The author’s

account of Harold Clastrup is

fictitious, used here to illustrate

his opinion.

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