Polycarp hasn't posted here for a while. Things have been stacking up--lawsuits to defend, cookbooks to write , packages to wrap. There was the important issue of waistcoat vs. cumberbund to sort through. The editor at Strangepup was also nice enough to ask Polycarp to contribute over there, and he has (click on either "Strangepup" or "Phil Martin" to the right to see). Now that the primary season is in full flower again, though, he just can't resist.
Click on the highlighted words and phrases for subtle clues as to what the stars might be saying to you.
Aquarius (January 20-February 18): Well, President Aquarius, after a bruising election campaign and a surprising and surprisingly public divorce in the last few months, you have chosen to concentrate not on the economy, which has problems, or the increasingly tricky problem of immigration, or on unemployment, which is at all-time highs, but on an extraordinarily attractive Italian pop singer. Your poll numbers are plummeting, but what the Hell? Does the fall in the numbers tell us that something about France is changing? And does the fact that you are almost the same age as Mike Huckabee tell us something about the USA?
Pisces (February 19-March 20): Your positions on conservative issues are slipperier than an eel in Astro-Glide, Pisces, but the big wallet and full-family press seem to be paying off. The main drawback from your own party seems to be your faith, which to Polycarp is inexplicable and sad. What's the Trinity among friends? Polycarp has a suggestion, though: since the Repubs don't seem to mind your conservative conversion experiences on abortion, gun rights, gay marriage, etc., and only seem to care that you're saying the right thing to them right now, why don't you see the light and become a Baptist until November? You've changed your position on every other core belief and value, so what's one more?
Aries (March 21-April 19): 2007 was a really good year for you, Aries. It's not often that you get two of the most coveted awards in the world in the space of a few months. You haven't voiced a public opinion about the current campaign, but Polycarp thinks that's because you understand that with the phrase "elder statesman" comes a certain amount of gravitas. Gravitas that would be lost, for example, if you were to engage in partisan scrabbling and cat-fighting out on the stump. The challenge for you is going to be to remain relevant to American politics while remaining above it all at the same time. Polycarp is therefore assigning homework to all Aries former vice presidents: pick up the phone and call any Leo former chief executive bosses in your Rolodex and tell them to look up the word "dignity" in the dictionary, and tell them that his wife got hammered in South Carolina because of a lack of it from the two most important campaigners out there. Time to be friends. Go after Cancer instead of each other. God knows the material is there.
Taurus (April 20-May 20): Last time your name came up at the Polycarp Security Council meeting it was right after you got appointed special envoy to the middle east and were going to run over there and sort through all this donnybrook once and for all. And then Cancer and Scorpio of State ran over there and were going to do the same thing in straightaway. Polycarp used to think you were the smart one of the Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine, but has re-read the star charts and has come to the conclusion that you suffer from the same intellectual limitations as Cancer, the Secretary of Scorpio, a former Cancer of Defense, the sharpshooting Vice-Aquarius in his undisclosed location, and above all, that idiot Paul Aquarius: you all expect Middle-Easterners, with their complex history of conflicts and tribes and heritage of intense identification with particular plots of land and exceptionally precise ethnic identities and millenia of struggle to act like the British and the Americans. You were just as bad as the rest of them, Taurus, albeit more articulate and appealing, but your narrow view of human behavoiur dooms your current portfolio to failure.
Gemini (May 21-June 20): The stars say it's over, Gemini, and in some ways that's too bad. You're sounding traditional Democratic themes, but people under stress tend to revert to what they know best, and you've turned back into a plaintiff's lawyer, manipulating jurors into voting for your client. But a long jury trial lasts three weeks, and we've been hearing that same speech since 2003. By now it sounds like what it is: plaintiff's closing argument in a med. mal. case. "Big corporations are bad and you know it. Let me fight them for you. Send them a message," etc. Polycarp has heard this closing in many courtrooms in many towns. It sometimes works with jurors, but on the stump it sounds facile and as real as Mitt Romney's conservatism. You're a good plaintiff's lawyer, so I know you righteously believe that what's best for you is the best for the world, but good intentions and don't get you any kind of job, much less the best one of all. You also developed a bad case of "do as I say, not as I do" with your hedge-fund pals and high-rolling ways (see also $400 haircut, 2004). So no White House for you this time. You do, though, qualify for a wonderful consolation prize. At a the astrologist's gathering Denver in August, the heavens predict 33% Scorpio (despite South Carolina), 30% Leo, 17% you. So in effect you pick the next president. It is traditional to negotiate a really good job in exchange for the vote. You could completely re-invent the Attorney General job. Put your legal skills back where they belong.
Cancer (June 21-July 22): Your deft touch with personnel matters continues, Cancer, showing us we have much for which to look forward over the next year. Presumably because of his immense success as Undersecretary of Defense (he was the one who convinced you to invade Iraq) and as Chairman of the World Bank (he was the one who left in disgrace over the scandal about his mistress being on the payroll) you have appointed this same Leo to chair the International Security Advisory Board, a high-level arms-control post that reports directly to the Scorpio of State. The stars say that he will succeed just as well in this post as did in his prior jobs, which is to say just as qualified as Harriett Meiers was for the Supreme Court, and as tempermentally suited for it as John Bolton was to be U.N. Ambassador, and as carefully screened as Bernard Kerik was to be Homeland Security chief, and excel as Michael Brown did as FEMA chief, and Donald Rumsfeld at Secretary of Defense, and ... oh, well.
Leo (July 23-August 22): The stars say that bickering like school-children on TV with Scorpios with lots of money in a state that allows you to marry your fourteen year-old cousin looked decidedly un-presidential and gavs the boyishly-handsome third-runner a rare chance to look like the only grown-up in the room, Leo. Polycarp says that thirty seconds of juvenile squabbling in public can erase months of talking about conciliation and unity and healing, and there you stood, and this is far too close a race to give the Scorpio in your life the jump. Nobody wants the finger on the button to have a surly temper. Congrats on the win, but knock it off. You have a chance here. Don't screw it up.
Virgo (August 23-September 22): Last summer, you were dead candidate walking (just scroll down, Gemini--Polycarp thought you were the Lindsay Lohan of politics) and now you're looking like if not quite yet the front-runner, at least a runner again. Congrats. And Polycarp thinks that having Pisces martial artists who dye their hair and routinely play parts far younger than they had any reasonable reason to play should keep their age-related remarks to themselves. Still and all, Polycarp's polling staff has staff has told him that the Republican turnout in every primary thus far this season has been lower than the Dem turnout. How do you get over that come November?
Libra (September 23-October 22): Bye, bye, wee Libra. Polycarp was sorry to see you pull out. It was kind of comforting having you on the stump, espousing traditional liberal values, earnestly campaigning with the candidates who actually have a chance, proposing hippie-ish ideas like a Secretary of Peace in the cabinet, and spotting UFOs over Shirley McClaine's house. Nutty as your presentation is, Polycarp thinks your heart is genuinely good and that if all politicians were as honest, earnest and well-intentioned as you, our world would be a better place. So now you'll just have to go back to Washington with your much younger and much taller smoking-hot wife and console yourself somehow.
Scorpio (October 23-November 21): The planets suggest that Leos are going to a big part of the next few months for you, Scorpio: suggesting romantic attachments to one, competition with another, international unrest caused by a third, folksy homespun humorous comments at your expense from a fourth. Despite the dismal results in South Carolina, Polycarp sees lots of votes and money in your future, but to have continued success in your chosen occupation, you have to appear to be in some way qualified for it, and constant bickering with the junior Leo from Illinois is about as far from being presidential as you could possibly be. After that debate in South Carolina, Gemini cracked that he "represented the grownup wing of the Democratic party" and all the pundits on NPR have been quoting him with relish. Keep this up and you'll let him back in the race.
Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): Hmmm. Sagittarius. You've been in your job for a little over two years and everybody's talking global recession. Your highly-respected predecessor held the job for twenty years through four different administrations and got along well with all of them. With dems and repubs alike He managed, through brilliance of perception and analysis, and force of personality, to convince the politicians to do the right thing, and kept the economy on its largest-ever sustained growth. Well, except for that nastiness about the dotcom burst. But that wasn't His fault. Maybe. Anyway, Polycarp has looked at the star charts and has two bits of advice for you. First, your Pisces predecessor told the politicians what to do and made them listen. Having politicians tell you what to do to help the Repubs stay in the White House is probably not fated to be such a successful strategy. Polycarp's also says that your predecessor has a phone number and that you have a phone book. Ponder these bits of information and think about their implications.
Capricorn (December 22-January 19): Polycarp gets most of his news from NPR and The New York Times so he doesn't hear much about football, although he is excruciatingly up to date on the African Nations Cup soccer tournament (Ivory Coast over Nigeria in a 1-0 hearbreaker) and Indian cricket scores (431 to 7 tonight) but the stars tell him that short-lived congratulations are in store for you, Aquarius, for recent athletic accomplishments. The stars also say that February 3 is an unlucky day for Aquarius New Yorkers traveling to Arizona to engage in competitions with annoying Roman numerals in their titles, especially if the contest is with people from Boston, but maybe now your big brother will stop teasing you about watching all the important games on TV.
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