Not Just for Wonks Anymore: Political Mag Gets Makeover

"No matter how you cut it," wrote Craig Varoga in his "Ask the Campaign Doc" column, "that profile is longhand for 'Fire me.' "

And let's not forget the ads for the myriad accoutrements of the modern campaign -- buttons, bumper stickers, "inflatable political billboards," machines that fake the candidate's signature ("Real Pen & Ink"), and pit-bull private investigators eager to dig up dirt on your opponent.

There's lots of money to be made in the campaign business, but there is one vexing problem that is a recurrent subject in the magazine: Pols who don't pay their bills. Apparently, candidates are eager to hire people to help them win but are less eager to actually pay them.

"I've got one candidate who's into me for eight grand and he's been into me for six years now," Brian Harlin, a vendor of Republican campaign gewgaws, told the magazine last year. "He's told people he's paid me already, and sometimes he tells me he's getting to it, but he's never paid."

Politicians breaking promises and squandering other people's money? Shocking!

Election Connections

You don't have to read Politics to read about politics. In this election year, magazines that usually avoid the subject feel compelled to produce political stories. For instance:

Golf Digest's April issue contains a 12-page section on golf and politics. Much of it is devoted to a painstaking day-by day chronicle of Dwight Eisenhower's presidential golfing. In his eight years in office, Ike played golf more than 1,000 times! Fifty years ago, in 1958, he either played or practiced on an astounding 194 days -- 44 of them at Bethesda's Burning Tree course.

These days, golf in Washington just isn't the same, the magazine reports. Ethics legislation passed last year bars lobbyists from taking a friendly pol out for a free round of golf. Naturally, there's a loophole: The pol can host a fundraising golf tournament and charge the lobbyist thousands of dollars to play in it.

"We can't pay to take congressmen out anymore, but they can call and ask us to pay to play in their fundraisers," one lobbyist grumbled. "That doesn't seem quite right."

Meanwhile, rocker Dave Grohl has announced his candidacy for president in a cover story in the music magazine Harp. (The final cover story, as it turns out: Harp is closing up shop with the March-April issue.)

"As president of the United States of America," Grohl says, "I promise to rock the [bleeping] house -- and everyone's invited."

Grohl, a native of Springfield, Va., is the frontman of the Foo Fighters and the former drummer for the legendary band Nirvana. Now he feels he's ready to lead the free world.

"There's 10,000 people that woke up this morning and felt like America is the right place to be, because at our show last night they were spilling beer all over themselves and tongue-kissing for two hours," Grohl says. "What other candidate can do that?"