A headline writer's view of the presidential race

Debbie Wasserman Schultz for president (Politico photo)

   One thing that has emerged from this hotly contested presidential primary field: If you want to be the leader of the free world, you'd better not have a lengthy surname.
   Why do you think Donald Trump is leading in all those polls? I'll tell you why. Because not only does his name fit neatly in large type on the front page of a tabloid newspaper, not to mention on the screen of a smartphone, but because it rhymes with so darn many words -- dump, thump, frump, pump, rump, hump, bump, Forrest Gump -- that the nation's next poet laureate is probably working today as a copy editor at the New York Post.
   But the Donald is far from alone in the anorexic surname department. There's: Cruz, Rubio, Biden, Graham, Fiorina (she's got four syllables, but only seven letters, and is likely to be identified more as Carly as the campaign heats up anyway), Bush, Jindal, Christie, Perry, Walker, Kasich, Clinton, Paul, Carson, Sanders, Santorum (three syllables, eight letters, he's lucky's he's not a Santorini, then he'd have four syllables and would split the Italian vote with Fiorina, but I digress), Huckabee, hell, there's even only one apostrophe in the bunch, O'Malley.
   What this race needs is a few more candidates like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Although I'm not sure how well she would fare in a primary race against John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.