Opinion

Road woes

Ben Clarke Political Consultant and Speechwriter
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This piece originally ran in the Greenfield Recorder (MA).

There are many annoying facets to life. The Internal Revenue Service. Testicular contusions. Valentine’s Day. Chief among them is the speeding ticket. For five years my episodic heavy foot has eluded the long arm of the law. My streak was interrupted New Year’s Eve by a state trooper from our neighbor to the north.

I used to love Vermont; even thought about moving there upon departing Washington. No longer. Vermont, you are shunned. As a non-skiing, non-anarchist carnivore with little craving for maple syrup, I am confident I can uphold said shun with Dwight Schrute-like exactitude. I will spare you the details of my defense, as I am in the early stages of compiling the moralities to mount my appeal.

I cast my own curse. Upon leaving dinner with a visiting friend, I mused: wouldn’t it be funny to get pulled over late on New Year’s Eve and — to the dismay of the officer — be sober? Not ten minutes later, that question was answered.

“Know how fast you were going?”

“40 MPH?”

“48 MPH, actually. In a 30 MPH zone. Where are you coming from?”

“Just left Manchester … drove up for the day to do a little shopping and have dinner.”

“How nice. Well, I can tell you guys have not been drinking, but that is pretty fast for the village here. License and registration, please. Oh, you got a dog here in the back seat … what kind?”

“A Boykin Spaniel.”

“Be right back,” he said.

I turned to said friend — Victoria — sitting in the passenger seat as the officer walked away. “Seems like a pretty affable guy … sure he will just give us a warning.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” she said with a chary grin.

To my disbelief, he walked back and handed me a $186 ticket. Did not even take the speed overage down a few miles per hour as a good will holiday gesture. I was stunned.

“Can you believe that guy!”

Victoria had a different, eye-rolling take. “Just consider the situation from his perspective.” (I should note, I was driving her car — a fairly sizeable Lexus SUV with Washington, D.C. vanity plates that read ‘Burdy.’ An employee of the National Rifle Association, she enjoys hunting game birds with her Boykin Spaniel.)

“As far as that guy was concerned, he just pulled over some jackass yuppy from Washington, D.C. driving a Lexus who spent the day shopping at posh outlets. Oh, and to top it all off, he thinks your wife’s name is ‘Burdy.’”

Now, Victoria is an attractive woman who has snaked her way out of many a speeding ticket over the years. Useless to me in this instance, she still wasn’t done. “And you couldn’t have just said he was a ‘hunting’ dog or a ‘mutt’ when asked by the officer? You had to call him a ‘Boykin Spaniel’? What part of this whole ordeal made you think you WEREN’T going to get a ticket. Hell, I would have given you one.”

I resisted the urge to leave her for dead in the Vermont wilderness, and we went on our way.

All speeding tickets harken back to a funny — if not infuriating — story. I was reminded of the two previous speeding tickets I have received in my 15 years behind the wheel. The first, years ago, while still in Washington. I was on my way to Dulles Airport to catch a flight. Per usual, I was running late. Very late. To get to Dulles Airport, most folks take the aptly named Dulles Airport Access Road. As you might imagine, this road goes to one place and one place only: Dulles Airport.

When running late for a flight, I always had two speeds: desperate and panic. Desperate was risky, but I always got away with it. Panic was Dale Earnhardt pace, wherein there was an 80% chance I would get pulled over, but a 90% chance my highly-irritable boss would fire me if I missed the flight. In this particular instance, I was driving at “desperate” speed.

It was going to be tight, but I was sure I would make the flight. The airport was within sight — a mile out. As I glanced in the rearview mirror to assess the aesthetic severity of my dishevelment, I caught the glaring lights of a state trooper closing in. There I am, within SIGHT of the airport, on a road that leads ONLY to the airport. The officer approached:

“Sir, may I ask why you were speeding?”

In a tone slightly north of rude but still shy of warranting arrest, I said: “You’re kidding right? Why do you THINK I was speeding, officer?”

That one cost me.

* * *

The final ticket brings back fond memories. A client was at a charity auction in New York years ago and bought a new Corvette. An elderly man not named Hugh Hefner, he had little use for the 10-cylinder speeding ticket printer and gave it to my boss at the time. Said boss decided he had no use for the Corvette in Washington, and arranged to have it shipped to his home in Los Angeles.

As it happened, I had to be in Los Angeles that next week for a meeting. I called my boss and said — in jest, really — “why don’t you just let me drive the Corvette cross country for you?” Shockingly, he agreed. I had four days to get there. I called my brother Sam. He was 16 at the time with a fresh new license in hand. “Get on the next flight to Washington … we are going on a road trip.”

The trip was epic. Experience of a lifetime. But to the point, midway through Kansas and midway through listening to Kerouac’s “On the Road” (book on tape … sacrilege, I know) we were greeted by an imposing Kansas state trooper in the middle of nowhere. In fact, I think that was the name of the town: Nowhere, Kansas.

“You boys know how fast you were going back there?”

Truth be told, we didn’t even see him.

“85?”

“Try 110 … 110 miles per hour.”

Visions of Leavenworth ran through my head. Not to mention scenes from Deliverance.

“I tell you what,” he said. “I will write you up for 85, but I don’t want to see you boys speeding in this rig on my highways in Kansas again, okay?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Who returns to Kansas for a SECOND visit, I thought.

* * *

Ah, speeding tickets. Reminds me of the officer who offers this response to a guy who sarcastically questioned the practice of “quotas” upon being pulled over: “Yeah, we have quotas. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven.”

Ben Clarke has worked in Washington, D.C. as a political consultant and speechwriter for the past 10 years. During that period, he has served as chief political writer for GOP strategist Frank Luntz, speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and communications consultant for Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked on countless House, Senate and Gubernatorial campaigns across America. He has also worked on or covered campaigns in Ukraine, Georgia and Greece. He may be reached at benclarkeopinion@gmail.com.