Episode 13: The Election
Zack to the Future- 1,173 views
- 28 Oct 2020
Mark-Paul and Dashiell navigate Bayside's treacherous political landscape with the help of former White House Assistant Press Secretary, and SBTB superfan, Reed Dickens.
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Welcome to Zach to the Future. I'm your co-host, Daniel Driscoll joined today with the man who's going to turn everything around at Bayside, Mark Paul Goslar. Hello, Marc. Oh, hello, Daniel. How are you today on this election episode? Let's skip all the niceties. Let's go straight. We have a lot to get to. This is an important episode. It's called the election. Right? This is a big episode. I have lots of notes.
I watched this and did my homework. So, yeah, pleasant pleasantries in the trash can. Let's just dive on into the suffering in engage in. Watch it. It's the student president election. Jessy's running unopposed until Zack hears the president gets a free trip to Washington, D.C.. Jesse's campaign is good but boring. Zack offers empty promises and fear mongering. Slater learned Zach's only in it for a free trip. So he gets Belding to say the trip is canceled.
Just as Zach pulls ahead in the polls, Jesse becomes a vapid, fun loving candidate to defeat Zach, while Zach attempts to sabotage his own campaign. Kelly's single vote win Zach the election Belding reveals the trip still happening, but Zach resigns to give Jesse the presidency the end. And we are in we're in act one just as easy as that.
And our last episode, we sort of described as a bottle episode. It feels like this one's back on track. We have lots of background, lots of things happening, a lot of movement yet to begin this episode. Skateboarder right off the top. Skateboarder right off the top. I'm watching it on Peacocke, as well as Hulu and on Peacock. There was a different theme song again sung by Michael Damian. We we had that discussion in the previous episode.
So if you missed it, go listen to Episode 12, Episode 11. Right. With Bennett Tramer. I caught that new alternate or old alternate theme song. It is. It's rough. You really know why they went with the one they did. It's worse.
So this episode I'm going off of the way I look in my hair, I think it falls somewhere between the Lisa car, the gift, fatal distraction, etc. We've talked about that. We shot these and then just play them in random order. There was no logic to that. Peter Angle didn't think it mattered to to basically air them.
They thought it mattered for other like they were. There was probably a logic, just not one rooted in, like, narrative and hair progression.
Yeah. So this my hair in this one, I'm happy with my hair. In this episode, I think I recently had a dye job because my whole head is blonde, which is nice.
I am I am a little dissatisfied with some of my tics that I do in this episode.
Notably I not a lot when I'm, when I'm talking to the camera, I not a lot and I do these double I winks and that's a complete fail. I think I'm trying to wink with one eye, but they come off as a double wink, which is a blink traditionally, which is a blink. Thank you Daniel. Yeah, but I will point those out as we progress through this episode. But cringe worthy for me. I had a really hard time watching myself in this episode, speaking to the camera because I didn't feel comfortable.
Well, I didn't feel comfortable me watching it. But I also don't think my character was comfortable doing it at that time because again, this was early on in the show, right? You were you were still finding your footing as Zach Morris. Yes, I was. And so with that, let's start the episode. Yeah, we're we're in the halls of Bayside. And, you know, you get the the election is happening. And this scene really quickly sets up like some pretty big Jessie Spano stuff of, you know, she has a a mother who was a activist in the sixties and she's running for office and like, very principled, you know, Jesse stuff that becomes her character and also principles of Zach in the same right.
We find out that she's running. She wants to make a difference. And Zach is just talking about the girls he chases down. Zach has a Roseanne Barr joke. Yeah. Basically says Roseanne Barr something about skipping a meal. Right. I don't think that would fly nowadays that that was a 90s type of joke.
No, I mean, it wouldn't you wouldn't pick on her for that. Certainly, just like the big the big old woman joke. But also, it would be a if it was about Roseanne, I would just be a different Roseanne joke at this point. I think our humor about Roseanne has evolved as well. Yeah. I mean, if we talk about Roseanne, we talk about our politics now, which goes in line with this particular episode. Yeah.
I wonder I wonder who Roseanne would be voting for if she was a student of Bassat and all this probably an independent vote.
And we get our first sighting of Mr. Dewey. Yes, we do. Mr. Dewey, played by Patrick Thomas O'Brien. He's in four episodes of Saved by the Bell. So a recurring teacher in the halls of Bayside, he was in a ton of nineties television, Gilmore Girls Home Improvement, Sabrina the Teenage, which it is just a massive, massive list of shows you definitely saw him on for at least. Episode or two, but Mark Paul, he was also in one nineteen ninety eight film Dead Man on campus, he was starring none other than Mark Paul Goslar.
Yeah, you were in a movie with Mr. Dewey. He played a priest in Man on campus. But when you say he was asking, were you in the same scene? Yeah, I know. Yeah. So I. I actually saw a dead man on campus in a movie theater. I was one of the people who was a ticket owning person, seeing that film at one of the few. Yeah, one of the few. The proud, the present.
I don't quite recall. I'm I'm struggling to remember if you ever shared a scene, maybe I'll go back and do some double homework for the next Mr. Dewey episode. And we can we can crack that case. But you guys were in a movie together. No need to do that kind of homework.
I'm sure you'll you don't want me to watch it on campus again. You'll get. No, you'll get the answer on Twitter. Don't worry. Oh, right. OK, yeah, that's a good point. I can save my time and I don't need to rent Dead Man on campus this evening.
So I did a little research on on Mr. Dewey. He was born in nineteen fifty one, which would put him around 50, 40 years old while we were filming Saved by the Bell, same age as Dennis Haskins. And I bring that up because in this particular show there would have been forty which is six years younger than I am right now. Way to bring the show down, Mark. Paul, your business card says I'm twenty eight. You gave me one the first time we met.
I was very confused. But, sir, your actual date has been revealed. That is kind of weird how when you're a kid, like the adults feel so much older and then as you grow older yourself, it's like, oh, they were they weren't that old at all. Like to think of you yourself, being older than Mr. Dewey feels impossible. So we'll see. Mr. Dewey again, you're saying as well? Yeah, we will. And he's actually in King of the Hill.
So they they liked him so much. They put him as a teacher in the what would have been the pilot episode. So, yeah, we'll see Mr. Dewey three more times. He's a he's a very memorable teacher, kind of like Mr. Tuttle because of his cadence and the way he carries himself. And we also learn Building was arrested for skinny dipping, just more of like Belding's horny history of like nude swimming illegally. That's he's just a very sexed up character.
We're finding out in this rewash.
You see the head nods. Did you did you catch those at the end of the scene? You kind of nod in and out like you like. Yeah, you're making my point punctuating. Yeah. Yeah. You're punctuating your lines anyway. So we get into the classroom now and Jesse's running for president unopposed. Unopposed. But yeah, Zach decides to put his hat into the running.
And why for a free trip to DC, which, by the way, can we just like it. Not a not a good not a good reason to do this, like just a trip to it. What do you really want to go to DC that bad with building for? Like, it's very confusing to me from like I that doesn't sound fun, but what do I know.
What do you know, Dashiell? I'm going to talk to somebody who actually does know more about DC than you. Our guest our guest this week is a friend of mine. Read Dickens and read. And I have been friends for, what, six years now.
Read actually, it was twenty ten. We met on the plane over twenty ten. Really. So, wow. I do my math. If I carry the one that's like close to ten years then yeah. Wow.
So it read it's hard to give you an intro because I think you're one of the most fascinating people I've met in ten years. Excuse me Martha. I'm in that camp. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were in the same room as I was. I didn't I didn't realize my microphone was working.
But tell them a little bit about yourself also to tell the story about how we met, because it is it is a funny story.
Yeah. So I, I was I had a very Forrest Gump experience. I drove I grew up in a small town in Louisiana and drove to Texas and volunteered and Governor George W. Bush's office and ended up being a young press aide in his West Wing and had an office about thirty feet from the Oval Office. And very soon after, I got promoted to be the White House assistant press secretary, which is a very mid-level level five is what he used to jokingly call it.
But I but after 9/11, they shut down our chief of staff, shut down our West Wing. It was harder to come in and out the West Wing for the White House staff that worked across the street in the old executive building. So my job ended up being in the president's little, you know, seven or eight people called the bubble. So I was with the president ten or twelve hours a day and traveled with him and around the world on Air Force One and ran with him and played golf with him and just had a very surreal experience.
And that was within the last week after 9/11. So I I started off my career for five years in the White House, was the national television spokesman in his reelection campaign. I spent a few months and over in the Middle East during the beginning of the war. So it was just a wild experience. I moved to California in twenty four and had been a serial entrepreneur company I spent the most time on. A baseball major league baseball bat company called Maroochy Sports I co-founded in 2010.
That is when I met you on the plane, was flying back and forth to L.A. We had temporarily relocated to Baton Rouge, where the baseball bat company was founded. And so we sat down next to each other and on the plane. And I remember I remember thinking I'd had a crisis management company for four or five years and had had probably seventy five different celebrity clients. And so I was I was not new to Hollywood. I had done a management group with the Jonas Brothers.
Like I was not new to the Hollywood scene. But but when Mark passed when you sat down next to me with those beautiful blue eyes, I was I was like, I'm not sure my opening lines.
Well, your opening line, if I remember correctly, we didn't speak probably and you weren't a plain talker, is, as you know, you you you waited, I think, until our descent.
Yeah, we were we were almost we were descending. And I remember I asked you what you guys were filming in the world. You were filming in New Orleans. I invited you to come to an LSU game because I told you that if you know that going to football games on the West Coast is not the same as real college football nascency. And we chatted about LSU and I remember I remember just that you came you came back up. We chatted at the luggage that claim and we traded numbers.
And then not long after I moved back to Los Angeles and we reconnected.
But that's right. And I have to add, one of my one of life's regrets is not taking you up on that offer to go see an LSU game. I hope one day I get that offer again because I won't let it pass this time. But, yeah, we I was working with a mutual friend, Vanessa Laschet, on a short lived show for NBC called Truth Be Told, she played my my wife on that show. And then I started immediately on another show called Pitch where I played a major league player.
And I remember Venessa going, you know, you should call Reed because Reed has a lot of connections in MLB and oh, my God. That's right. Maroochy And so my character, Mike Lawson, was a Maroochy sponsored client player, and I was the only one on that show that was allowed to fly that flag because the show was sponsored by Wilson Rawlings, Louisville Slugger, things like that. But my character was allowed to bat with the Maroochy Bats, which you guys made custom for me.
The weights that I wanted to Lancs that I wanted, I still have one actually in my office sitting right here.
They're just beautiful bats that are like works of art.
Well, that was actually very representative of our reality because Maroochy, a Louisville Slugger and Rawlings and Wilson were the officials were official partners of Major League Baseball. We built our brand as a rogue rogue upstart, and I got 40 major league players to invest in the company. And so the guy who was the deputy commissioner, now the commissioner, Rob Manfred, they called me one time and said, you can't use more than two or three players in your advertisement.
That's against Major League Baseball players union policy. And I said, well, then you should sue your players, their owners and the company. And they hung up on me and never called back. So we built our brand. Making these really making these really. We made about three hundred videos making fun of Louisville Slugger. Rowlings Wilson. It didn't go over well. That was not popular in the baseball industry. But what's what's interesting is that all the players who used our products a lot of times they would be sponsored by local slugger or Wilson or Rawlings, but they were investors in our company.
So your character being a star and the catcher, the starting pitcher, that was actually pretty reflective of our reality.
So that's all a fascinating read. But again, you're here not only because of your political background and because of your business savvy, but also because something about you being a super fan, like how how was it sitting next to someone on a plane that you grew up emulating? You got to give us some back story idolising.
Yeah, there's no question. Like I said, I had had you know, I spent five years on Air Force One and had had dozens of A-list celebrity clients, and none of them ever gave me the butterflies. But I actually thought I realized I was having a life moment because I I said when I was in middle school, I would use lemon juice to bleach my hair and did my hair like Zack Morris. I named my dog Zach Morris. I actually have more than a few people signed my yearbooks to me as Zach I had a teacher one time.
This about things that wouldn't fly in today's world. Like the Rosenbach I met. I had a teacher throw it out recently that shattered on the wall. I ducked and it shattered on the wall behind me. And he said, Mr. Dickens, I tell the jokes to this class, this is not saved by the bell. And then and then another at my geometry teacher went on my turn, my paperwork, and she said she said, Hey, Zack Morris, do you think you're really going to charm your way through life?
That's your plan? Yes, ma'am, absolutely. And so I was kind of known that that was my that was my persona and I live for it. So when I sat down next to work, I was like, well, I kind of just I got to get some work done and then I got to figure out how to talk to him without sounding like the psycho superpower.
It sounds like you played it correctly in waiting, like waiting until the descent. Definitely. And even waiting until baggage claim to make like a formal. No, it's like you took the pressure because when you're on an airplane, you are trapped to the person sitting next to you. So, like, yeah, that was that was a thoughtful way to handle it.
It's just it's it's it's just like dating, you know, you've got to be careful not to be too aggressive. And and the truth is, I was going through a major shareholder battle and a lawsuit had a lot going on. So the truth is, I had a lot of work to get them and I didn't want to blow it. And so I remember one thing I was very careful about is I, I my first thing I said to my call was that I mentioned something about your shooting schedule in New Orleans just to show that I actually was not just that I actually understood how your life worked, wasn't just a crazy fan, even though I was you weren't like, how's Kelly?
I think the better question that you could have asked me was, where's Kelly? I get a lot of that, like where screech as if I travel or they are part of my life at all times. Not because house Kelly, I could play that. I guess I could say, you know what, if she's doing great, she's you know, she's she's living with her husband. She has two kids. You know, she's on a new show here and there.
But where's Kelly? I wouldn't know where screech I don't know.
And at that point, yeah, it's a conversation killer. Now, more this next company on it is something I know you're a big fan of and a fan of one product of theirs in particular, and that is Alpha Brand.
Alpha brain is what got me started on the on it journey. If you've heard our shows in the past, you know that Alpha brain is it's it's a nootropic. What's a nootropic you might ask. It's a dietary supplement that helps support certain brain functions, including memory, mental speed and focus. Maybe I should have been taking on it years ago so that I could have remembered these episodes. Now, then then we wouldn't have a podcast. Now, I'm so glad you didn't find on it until later.
That's true. I found on it actually after Franklin and Bash as how long I've been on on it. I love their supplements. Alpha Brain, we've talked about total human is another supplement that I take every day, and it's a vitamin PAC that has alpha brain in it as well as some other supplements. And then it has a night pack and that has supplements like new mood in it to help you with sleep and dealing with stress. So if there's one other supplement I would say that you need in your arsenal, it would be alpha brain and then total human, which is like your daily vitamins for both night and day.
Yeah. And it's worth noting here that it has sold over one million bottles of alpha brain and only a couple hundred thousand of those were from our Paul. Personally, no.
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Zack, Zack, save 10 percent. Go to onat dotcom. Did you remember watching this episode in your youth? Yeah, I actually inso so remember one I did because I was actually intrigued by politics at the time that I actually ran for school president. So I actually did remember that episode. But also I think I told you this, Mark, 12 years ago. My kids came into my bedroom on Saturday morning because they had always asked my wife if they if they found a new show that always permission for my wife.
And they were explaining the show with this cool kid. And this wrestler is married and they realize that we're talking about say what they truly think they discovered saved by the bell. And so I actually saw the election episode with them a few months ago.
That's interesting because when Jessie mentions the sixties, like her mom was a part of the 60s right now, saved by the bell is as long ago as the 60s were when, say, by the bell was on. That's like that's the level of generation gap we're talking about.
Yeah, my kids love the show, so, yeah, I have the episode had a lot of funny moments and I think it was almost like a precursor to today's politics. Right. Where that voice is really was a lot savvier. You had one candidate. This happens often, right, with Bush, Gore, Bush, Kerry, Obama. You have one candidate that's way more substantive than one candidate who's based Sabria way more savvy of a politician. Right.
Who actually knows the audience and and the the whole like, do you want to live a life without pizza or hotdogs? Right. That's actually knowing your audience.
You know, we're in the max for their their various campaign speeches after Zach is running. And it does like Jesse's speech is like good but boring. And Zach, like, truly whips up the crowd into a frenzy of, like, she's going to take your pizza, basically, which is like still I was going to ask you sort of I mean, you're already kind of set it, but like, it seems like that is a common a common theme in real politics.
Like that is how things divide for whatever reason.
Yeah. I think if you go back to Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon was an incredibly intellectual. He was an intellectual giant. He actually was a policy wonk. And John F. Kennedy was very light on policy. He was young. He had had everything kind of given to him in life. But he was a much savvier politician. He knew his audience. You know, he knew what the truth is. George Bush senior was a much, much had much more depth policy wise than Bill Clinton when Bill Clinton was forty two.
But Bill Clinton was obviously a world class politician, that he felt pain and he understood them. So you could just you can follow the last six decades of politics. And you see this over and over. Even Mike Judge's movie, Idiocracy captures that where the guy's like with South Carolina in the house and everybody's going crazy like it's a basketball game. And then it's then you see that it's all written in the teleprompter. And I think I think that's the way politics has regressed to today.
Yeah. I mean, Bill Clinton on Arsenio Hall, I feel like is a is a known moment in culture of like, uh, like the cool president playing a saxophone. Like what does that have to do with this policy? Does it matter? Like he's on it, he's on a cool show and it's it's I watch it at night because I'm cool and like I want my president to be cool. It's a yeah, it's definitely a thing. Yeah.
Post host television. Right. The cooler candidate has won almost every time. Right. So you look at you look at Mitt Romney in twenty twelve. I'm sorry. Twenty, twenty twelve. Mitt Romney was just a policy giant and Barack Obama was much cooler. Right. I mean you can really go election to election.
Al Gore Al Gore was a policy giant and George W. Bush was was cooler. And so it's you can you can say that's an indictment, which maybe it is. Right. Because Plato famously predicted that late stage republics devolve into a democracy. And I think Twitter and social media has accelerated this devolution from republic to democracy. And whether you think that's a good thing or not, I think you're constantly saying that the person I used to joke ten years ago that by the time my kids were grown, intellectuals were going to run against each other as president.
And I had no idea I would ever actually see the presidential ballot a you early your early on that prediction.
I was early. Yeah.
Hatebreed, I'm going to I'm going to be devil's advocate here. You said that the popular person wins, but George W. did not win the popular vote as well as our current president. Trump did not win the popular vote. No, I said the cooler person. Yeah, the cooler person usually wins, but they didn't. But they didn't win the popular vote. They won the electoral win. That kind of like be against what you were saying?
No, because I said when you think about the reason why they created the founding fathers, created a republic, was to avoid the emotional mob like the masses. Right. So to win the popular vote, all you have to do is really win seven seats or six. And that's not representative of the 50 states in the union. And so if you just wanted to win the popular vote, you would just go to New York, Chicago, Dallas. You just go to a few cities.
And that the founding fathers were very careful to make sure we were not a democracy because then the emotional mob would rule in. The founding fathers had never even heard of Twitter. So whether you think it's a good thing or not, this system was actually set up not just so that you could win by a technicality with the electoral map, it was actually intended. You know, in Silicon Valley, they say it's a feature, not a bug. It was actually intentionally designed to protect us from from majority.
And now, you know, Daniel, I know you were you were thinking now I know.
Now I'm not saying I'm not I'm not taking a position on whether that's good or bad, but that was the intent.
No, I mean, it is interesting because the more the more we're talking about this, it feels like America is just one big old high school. And you just have to, like, go around to the right tables and, like, be popular to the right groups for the right reason. I mean, they it's it's neat. They couched it, you know, as a school election. But there's some pretty clear parables here for how it applies to actual US democracy.
Yeah, I thought it was fascinating how Jessie Spano says at one point when Kelly says she wasn't sure who she was going to vote on, Jessie Spano says, but we're women. We go to the bathroom together. And actually in both parties think, like Joe Biden famously said a few months ago, you're not a real black person if you don't get them right. Both parties think the black people are supposed to vote for Democrats, Hispanics, both are Democrats.
Suburban women are supposed to split evenly. Both parties have this expectation of how each demographic plays out. People over sixty five. Historically, Republicans win by 20 points. This time, Biden's winning by twenty seven. So that's a structural that's a structural breakdown in what usually happens in the parties. And so I thought Zack and Kelly, both talking about Slater and Jesse says it's Kelly, which is we're men, we're women. You're supposed to vote for me.
And that's actually how both parties think.
Yeah. And of course, Mac's in the in the mix. He has apron's on to play both sides of this thing, which seems like a weird place to put a couple of 15 year olds faces just right it right at crotch level.
But I can't tell you that actually I notice so many nuances in this episode because I hadn't noticed before. When he does that. I can't tell you how many people in the business world do that. Right. Well, like people in the private equity world, CEOs of major corporations, they'll host one candidate and chest thumping hug and talk. Have a great time. And the next week they'll host the other. Right. And so capitalists are usually agnostic to party.
And so Max was doing well. What a lot of major tech writers and a lot of major executives and corporate executives in this country do. Max was kind of giving the kids a juvenile version of what a lot of business people actually do in this country.
I mean, he's in the business of selling burgers, right? Like he doesn't want to he does want to alienate half of his burger eaters.
How do you feel about this magic trick? You mean the hand, the weight, the magic trick of him revealing the aprons? No, no, no.
With what? When he offers Zach his hand and it falls off?
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's you know, it's his it's look, and we love to have you on the show. And I know you were you're just trying to trying to fill the scenes with fun. And I get it. I'm not trying to knock your magic, but it's, you know, maybe not the grandest illusion. That's that's the polite way to to phrase it. I can't wait to get at in you in a ring. He's going to make me disappear like I'm going like all this talking and I'm just going to stand there and vanish into thin air.
You'll never find me.
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but he is in the reboot and I don't think the man is aged.
No, you I think you are allowed to say it because he was one of the first people to post on social media. So like all the all the writers and everything, we signed some pretty like don't say a thing stuff. But as soon as, like, Ed posts in his outfit and he's on set, it's like, oh, OK, well cool. And fans were excited because people love Max. Just pointing out real quick while we're still in the max.
And you know, before his accent screeched to get brochure's as that's what you had to do to learn about a city at the time in history. Kelly's the undecided voter and Mike Kelly are kind of like wholesome. I see the good in everyone attitude. I think, like, she really represents a real type of person who doesn't know which lever to pull. And it's kind of nice, again, to like in this grand metaphor for voting, they they give that role to Kelly.
I thought that made a lot of sense.
More importantly, what is Dustin Diamond doing during our chat with his mouth? I rewound this a few times, let's say, and it seems to be like he's trying to get food out of his teeth, but there is no food on our table. So your guess is as good as mine. And what he was actually doing with his mouth is after I give him the nugget right there and then he just like, you know, keeps chomping away like he's got some cut in his mouth or so.
Hmm.
When we noticed him kind of wiping some drool off his mouth, a couple episodes coming in to the max, maybe there was like a snack table precariously close to the entrance of the max and he just couldn't keep his hands out of it. I don't know. And then Slater get some catcalls on his entrance. He must have had his fan club that night in the audience.
You're saying it's fake news. You're saying the cat calls are fake news? Well, I didn't I didn't appreciate it. Let me tell you, I remember that feeling and came back in a in a wave. And I don't like it when when someone else gets the calls and I don't. Look, you got a bat in the room right there next to you. We've established that. So just pick it up, swing at something and, you know, see if you don't feel better right after.
So Slater says he's voting for Jesse. And, you know, Zach asked what would happen if a woman ran the school or the country and he'd said, well, it's less violent and color coordinated. At first I thought, oh, that's very progressive. And then I thought, nope, that's pretty sexist.
It's like it's still slaters misogyny. But it's like this is a like last week he was saying, like a woman needs to be in the kitchen kind of thing.
This is almost like, you know, like this is like a good version of sexism or something like it sounds nice, but is in fact still not not the best that that is like what a woman would accomplish in office.
And then we get into the hallway and Slater enters yet another catcall.
Wow. It seems like you're holding on to something, if I may. Paul seems like you're you're holding on maybe some things, but at least one thing. So who knows? Maybe maybe we'll we'll work through it together by the time we wrap one hundred episodes of this podcast and you get screech just doing what he does, you know, as is been established, he just info dumps like you cannot trust Screech with your plan, which Zach does often.
He gets all the info that Zach is just in this for the trip.
Were you impressed with him lifting Screech against that locker? I mean, it looks good.
He like I was actually impressed with the directing to keep the bottom just a little bit, a little bit of tuft of slaters hair in the frame when you see Dustin lift to lift it up.
Maybe that's why I got the catcalls. He was able to do that. I wasn't able to do that.
Do you think that's why you think they were like, yeah, lift up another guy?
Speaking of a guy who could lift a few. Yeah, we get building in the locker room lift if you want a few beers.
Yeah. Building looking pretty doughy in his, like little belly shirt. It's it is. So I know why they did it for budget. I get it. It is so funny to picture an adult man working out in a in a kid's locker. I mean I guess it's actually not funny.
It's pretty disturbing and good for Dennis Haskins, you know, I mean, the laugh is at his expense and it seems like he's pretty comfortable being that way and doing anything for a laugh. So hats off to him. But that outfit, my God, that's not even like it's supposed to be a smaller short like maybe it's his original shirt. I don't know. It looks like a cut off and then boxer shorts and the sock garters, like the whole thing.
It makes zero sense. Yeah.
His outfit is like very maxed out comedically like that. I know we talked about when Slater was dressed up like a wrestler. One of the fantasies you would like the outfit needs one less thing. They did like just the right amount of funny things for buildings, outfit, almost kind of like a like what Will Ferrell embodied of this. Like, I'm very comfortable with my body is kind of a doughy man. You get that same kind of energy from building cars.
And now we're back in the classroom and Zach is about to play his campaign ad. Just want to let you know, I believe that that's Don Barnhart, who is the voice over for my ad. And Don Barnhart is one of our directors who drinks the majority of the show. And we also get some pictures of you, Mark Paul, that I would imagine are are real photos watching this.
I was actually shocked at the use real photos of my my real baby photos. I, again, don't remember these episodes and watching them, I thought, well, that's that's interesting. That that that that's me.
One of my actual favorite things in movies and TV is when they show you a house of a family and you can kind of like see the fake pictures the family had to take to, like, fill the house. I love that. I'm a big fan, so it's cool to see, like, oh, let's use some some baby mcpaul here.
So speaking of baby Mark, Paul, there's a photo. I think it's the third baby photo here. See if I can posit right there. And it's my mother holding my baby face. And you can notice my mother's hand is the skin tone is substantially darker than my skin tone because we've talked about this in the past. My mother's Indonesian and people have always wondered, like or not wondered, but they they were not aware that I was half Asian.
And if they had watch closely, they could have figured it out right here. Well, not that they would have figured it out, but yeah. The smoking gun. Yeah, there is a clue. There's a clue. Did you know that, by the way, I read that you're a role model, that Zack Morris was not the white guy that you thought he was?
No, I, I did not know that. And I think you told me that it was like it was my opening.
It was when I opened it on that business card next month, by the way, by the way, I'm also half and also half not white, by the way.
But yeah, that's the reason why I had to always have my hair dyed and I had brunette hair. Yeah, there's. There's my my mother's hand holding my cute little face, so read, I wanted to ask you about this ad specifically, just as someone who has been like in the arena of politics for a substantial amount of time in a major, major organization, the White House, what exact do right here? And what would you maybe have done differently if this was your campaign ad for Zach?
You know, the way I always think about ads, because I remember sitting in the test, the focus groups and a lot of the strategy strategy meetings, especially in 2004, I was young, but still was invited to sit in some of the senior meetings.
And I it's like relationship counselors would say that a lot of times people don't remember what you say, only how you make them feel. Right. And and then in political advertising, one of the most effective ads of the of the twins was this ad that George W. Bush ran against John Kerry, where it just listed all 30 times that John Kerry had voted to cut military spending and the wolves got coming closer and closer. It was this eerie music and the wolves kept coming out of the woods and more and more wolves.
And then they kept coming closer, was like a pack of wolves. And it was it was it was it would send the cold showboater. And that was actually one of the most it tested off the charts. And the point is that the substance people don't usually remember any substance of political ads. They remember how it makes them feel. And so I think this ad I really notice it really stood out to me, this whole episode that in politics, you kind of dumb the message down to the lowest common denominator.
And then the other side, if somebody if one side does something that really thumbs, thumbs things down, the other side immediately starts commenting about how it's threatening democracy. And that's actually what Jesse does, which is this is a threat to democracy. And I think both campaigns in every presidential campaign, both campaigns start out talking about their policies. And then by the end of the election, they've realized voters aren't that sophisticated and the candidates are just trying to be likable and fun.
And I think every campaign defaults in that direction.
And we get building revealing, you know, by way of slaters, trickery, that the trip is off. And now that kind of like it's like the plot of the producers. He has to, like, wreck his own boat.
Well, then I don't know if this is something that's interesting for this discussion or not, but there was actually quite a few reports about how the current president wanted to run, run for president, really more as a PR move. And when he realized he actually was going to win, the nomination was kind of panicked. And that actually made me laugh watching this episode that this is not you know, there's quite a few reports out there by credible sources that that that that happened in real life, this this last election.
Yeah, no, I mean, I've seen the pictures of Trump on election night, and he he definitely did not look like a man who was, like, happy about what was happening, which is confusing.
Yeah, it's the ultimate dogcatchers car moment. Right. Dogcatchers star. When you think, hey, this is this is fun camping. And I've always said this, that it's a completely different skill set to campaign than it is to govern. And I think everybody who thinks they want to be a politician pictures themselves can take No. One pictures of themselves sitting in a government with the Department of Transportation and a meeting with the Department of Transportation. So governing is not fun and it's a different skill set.
And so I definitely think Trump love the idea of winning. And I think he loved the idea of campaigning. But running a 20 trillion dollar economy and two wars and two point one million government bureaucrats is probably not what he had on his mind.
Also, if he lost, he would have it would have been the best I mean, truly the best thing for him to get to, like. He doesn't alienate all of his Hollywood friends. He gets to say the election was rigged for the rest of time and like, he can kind of like do. Yeah, it seems, you know, who knows? Could have been a very different, very different four years. It's worth noting also that that Zachs very hollow video actually dissuades Kelly, like the video makes up her mind by saying, like, oh, I could never vote for someone who's just so shamelessly trying to get my vote.
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But does this ever work like like do you ever have advisers in an election at the finish line saying what you need to do is completely change who you are to get votes? Like does that strategy? Is there any precedent?
So it's so it's interesting. I think the most the the election where something like this stands out the most and I don't know, I'm not I'm a registered independent. This is not a partisan analysis. This is just kind of a historic fact at this point because I have a lot of friends who are involved in this. But John McCain was losing by three touchdowns, right? At one point, he was losing by 19 points or 20 points. And there was a lot of strategizing going on.
And that's the result of those strategy meetings, I call it. I call it the double reverse looking lateral Hail Mary, which was Sarah Palin. And so there are times, you know, they started having John McCain carry an economics book around the show. He's going to do it on the economy. I mean, it was it was very clumsy. But I do think there are times when desperation hits him. And you had in fact, in the 2004 campaign, John Kerry put on an orange based baseball cap and camouflage and went hunting with a rifle and he was carrying it the wrong way.
And so there absolutely are times when when candidates are, I think, poorly advised because remember, advisers all work. They're paid to talk about strategy and PR. And so a lot of times when you're meeting with your advisers, they make everything a strategy or PR problem. And so what I often say is that sometimes people think they have a perception problem and really they have a reality problem. And so advisers tend to make everything. So when you meet with your advisers, a lot of times they think you're being covered unfairly.
We have a perception problem when a lot of times maybe the voters are right. Maybe you have a reality for the voters just don't like what you're offering. So I think that's a very interesting. I think that that strategy meeting was very interesting, very much parallels real life.
And it works. I mean, Jesse essentially becomes like a Malibu Barbie doll, like in an all pink with overblown hair. And, you know, Jack flips to he's now he's like tough on school and like he's he's like the authoritarian candidate.
I mean, listen, we've all seen examples of this where people try to fundamentally candidates try to fundamentally change who they are. And again, that's a lot of times you've got the politician who's basically like a CPA who's never taken his tie off in his life. And the next thing you know, they're like have their sleeves rolled up and they're playing kickball with people. And, you know, it's just so awkward. Right. So I think that the the phrase that's spoken in politics often is be who you are, where you are.
And when politicians try to get outside of who they are to try to move the needle in a demographic, it usually just ends up looking really clumsy.
We're back at the classroom and this is right before the well, this is the poll update with streetwalking. And this is very much who I was back in this day. I don't know if this was the same for you guys, but these shoes that we open up on Vision Street, where you guys remember those I'm familiar with vision as like a a like Oggi skateboarding company, like vision was like one of the first like streetwear brands to really take off these shoes made me so happy in my youth.
I remember wearing these and being so happy that I could show these off, which is probably why they're up on the desk for all the world to see. But I remember these shoes and I was a a pseudo skater back in the day and these were life for me. These like I was a sneaker head for these shoes.
Yeah. Zack Morris, like a confirmed sneaker head Jordans. And yeah, it's like early in the culture for that stuff for sure. I don't think I don't think Zach ever had Jordans though. Did he not have those. Jordan remember we talked about. No, we had those dirty converse and those became like his thinking of Nike high tops though like there were definitely Nike high tops, not Jordan's.
Well we'll have to see, but I see those as Converse. Those are converse high tops. Well, we'll see if he had high tops.
Sneaker watch. Yeah, you definitely did have some cool shoes later on for sure.
I would love a pair of those visions straight, whereas today, because I am telling you that was life for me back then. They had this like little pad on the side for when you all did that. I didn't like where away your your by your pinky toe smart had this a little pad right there. Yeah. It was, it was awesome. It would last like two extra, more days.
So we're in the hallway right before everyone goes in to vote and I take a sip out of this nonfunctioning water fountain. I just want to point out my superb acting with also the wiping of the mouth to. Firm that I actually had some water, but check this out now, of course, that water found not hooked up to anything, but you do wipe the mouth. Yeah, it's very look at that acting mark, Paul. Great stuff.
That's what you call acting. That's what that's. You wouldn't understand. I would not even begin to understand that that is what you call acting. You're correct in that in that sense. And and so this is a he wages a disinformation campaign, which is also, I would say, very common in modern politics. But it's been around for a while. But it's like a false flag operation. He's like basically creating an attack on his own soil and kind of blaming the enemy and.
It doesn't go great for Zach, it just like Kelly was swayed one way, all the negativity surrounding Zach sways her back to him. She feels bad for the candidate and votes for him.
So she votes for me and we get the election results. And the number is three. Forty two for Jessie and three forty three for Zach Morris.
And he demands a recount, which was that which was not common vernacular at the time. So you were a part of the bit. I mean you were on the ground floor for the biggest contested election in US history. I'm I'm you're probably smarter than me about it. If there's no I don't know it because I'm very dumb. But that was a recount tradition like recounts a word we all know now because of two thousand. Right. Well, so what happens?
There's nothing that incentivizes people to get smart on something really fast, like billable hours. So the lawyers saw it coming. Right. And so I'm not joking. So what happened was a lot of states have what's called an automatic trigger recount. So that's the margins. Less than one percent triggers an automatic recount. Typically, though, that margin is in states that don't have enough electoral votes to map. So like you may have Wisconsin or some state that has like a point seven margin, but the electoral votes at stake don't sway the election.
So the lawyers for the Florida tie coming CBS, the networks helped a lot because they called the election for Gore before the entire panel panhandle was off work. So all of the Republican votes, which were military bases and churches, were still at work in the Panhandle. They called the election because they forgot the animals. And typical of network media forgot that the panels on the Central Time Zone. So they took it back in the undecided column. It goes to show there's a lot of misinformation, even really smart, sophisticated people I know in politics and even people who know history well, really well will casually say things at dinner to me all the time about the Florida recount that are just demonstrably false.
So I think what I think is the most interesting thing about recounts is the election. A presidential election has to be over by December. I believe it's December twenty first. So if a recount is not done by December twenty first, the House of Representatives chooses the president. So a lot of people like to say the Supreme Court, stop the recount. Well, the Supreme Court stopped the recount in 2000 in Florida because they were only recounting the four Democratic counties, which is unconstitutional.
And to recount the entire state would have taken longer than the December twenty first deadline, which is when the House of Representatives was chosen, the election. So there's a lot of semantics. There's a lot of real deadlines that are in there that are not just semantics.
Well, Jesse is not too pleased with this shooting. Daggers at her once friend Kelly. Good acting, by the way, from Elizabeth. That is a I really believe she is pissed. If you've ever seen a a pissed off person, every vote counts. Yeah, right. That that is an interesting.
So like, again, in looking at this both as like a extended metaphor for a larger democratic systems, but also like this is a kid's show. So as a kid show, I'm sure a lot of children were introduced to the concept of like elections and voting through this episode or at least more familiarised. And there is like an actual lesson here that every single vote counts.
And it introduced that. It introduced the concept of a swing vote, which was also before the Florida recount was not that was not a thing. Right. So it didn't use the term, but the two things won. Every vote counts. And to Kelly was the swing vote. And she was a young female. She was a certain demographic, a young, a certain psychographic, someone who was sympathetic to both sides and kind of undecided and not a political activist.
And that person who's not a political not a political junkie oftentimes is the swing vote. So it was a pretty sophisticated thing to do something.
And, you know, the trip still on to D.C. and Zach pops on into Jesse's room where her her creepy little doll that we've been watching all season is wearing a hat. I thought that was a fun choice. Whoever was whoever was on set, it was like put the doll in the campaign hat. Great job. Not sarcastically. That's that's good thinking. And Zach comes in and they they have like a very tender moment here to end the episode and he resigns.
And is this the first time that we see our hero, Zach Morris? And yes, I said hero referring to Zack Morris feeling remorse?
No, he's like, God, I'd have to go back. I mean, I think he's even last week and Mamas and the Papas, he's in Belding's office being like, golly, gee whiz, I was sure a jerk. Like, he regularly shows remorse for his actions just bizarrely after like every bit of damage has been done is when it when it starts to click with him that like, maybe I could have done things a little differently. But, you know, who amongst us hasn't been in that position wishing we squashed a little less earth?
I actually appreciated the fact that even at that time. That there was a they highlighted a platonic friendship. Well, I think they're also still keeping this in play that it could be a Zack and Jesse thing. Like I think there is a little bit of like juggling in the writers room of like, oh, like who's it? How's it all going to shake out? But it is nice. The platonic friendship and like the very tender Friends Forever theme as established by Bennett Tramer in the first episode he wrote.
And now again in this, it just becomes like a real hallmark of the show. This like warm. You know, there's this warm tone. We see a lot of uplifting and, you know, high fives, freeze frames. This is just like a nice tender moment between childhood friends.
Before we end this show, I thought something that was interesting in this particular scene was Zach saying, I want you to be president and go to Washington. That city needs someone honest. At the time George H. Bush was running. It seems that no matter who's running, we we always think someone is dishonest running this country way.
At the time, George Bush senior, was he in. He was in office. He was eighty nine, correct. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm just saying it doesn't matter running. Oh you mean like running for governor. It doesn't matter who's who's in office. We always think of them as being dishonest.
Yeah. What's up with that. Why could you go back one hundred years and make that joke about Washington? Like does the city just attract a certain person?
So so that's a great point and obviously a complex one. But I would say a few things. One is that in DC there's this saying often that everyone who knows doesn't talk and everyone who's talking doesn't know. Right. There's this one. Two people need to know what do people want to know versus what do people need? So any time you have a bunch of people making decisions and deciding what you as the public need to know on a need to know basis, whether it's about national security or whatever else, that that creates a certain that just bakes in a certain amount of distrust.
Right. To the system that you got all these people sitting behind closed doors deciding, hey, you you don't really need to know what's going on in terms of all of our kind of secret military operations. So I think that's always been like the Kennedys were famous from going up to President Kennedy had a cold today. And wait a minute, we just saw the generals all coming at the president. Kennedy had a cold today. So there's always been this need to know which is want to know distrust.
And I think that's some that some of that's the second thing is when you feel like people that are running for office aren't the most honest, what it takes to become president. Is brutal. So I think if if a if someone if a candidate makes it through the gauntlet and they're not a compulsive liar, it's usually because they have an extraordinary amount of message discipline and even message discipline, which is just repeating the same things every day is a form of lying by omission.
Right.
So so I think in general, it's very difficult to make it to the finish line without being extremely conveniently selected, without even the fact I would imagine that you are the person the one person in the country best suited for this job is its own sense of like the craziest lie anyone can tell themself. Like there's just no way anyone can know they're the guy or woman to do this. And yet there's people every four years who are less than that who line up for the job.
And yeah, it's certainly a specific personality type. And you don't imagine some folks want to do good and but here we are.
Well, we think about how we think about the absurdity. Like they're trying to make it look absurd at first that Zack Morris is running for president, class president. Right. But if you think about it with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, even Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, a lot of people recently who didn't win the nomination, they're running it. Thirty nine forty years old. If they walked into Apple or Amazon or Wal-Mart or like a Fortune five company and said, hey, I'd like to be the CEO, they get laughed out of the room.
Right. To be like this is a trillion dollar company. But because the public is not basically someone in order to run for president. Thirty nine or forty, you have decided to run for president. Thirty six. So that means you woke up and said, twenty two trillion dollar economy, three wars, Congress, immigration, artificial intelligence, automation, societal restructuring, economically currency. I think I should run the country. And that takes a certain amount of delusion.
Yeah. Yeah.
It sounds like a bad job. I mean, I'm not going to lie as far as jobs go. There's a whole lot of other ones I would I would personally rather have. So. So, yeah. Uh, well, that seems like a good segue to maybe remind people that there is an actual election happening in this country and gone out and vote. If you haven't done that already. This is a maybe a good message to to end on, unless you want to tell us whether or not the government will ever let us know about aliens, in which case great platform is actually the future exclusive.
But otherwise, you know, just get out there and vote. Folks, we do have homework for next week. This podcast is just far, far from over. It is an episode called The Zach Tapes. Mark. Paul, any thoughts on what the Zach tapes might be about? I have zero take on what it could possibly be read.
Do you have any problem with the Zach tapes? He has a dog named Zach Morris.
I think that's one of the most interesting parts of this, is is testing Mark Paul up on things about because I mean, it couldn't be like a you know, when you think of people having tapes, right?
You think of like the Paris Hilton, it's not one of those. You know, you're not it's not one of those. And that would have been way ahead of its time for for the culture. Way more than a pair of sneakers on a desk. No, it's it's a it's an iconic episode. I look forward to you watching it. Iconic it actually. Yeah. Well, I would say it's one of the more iconic one of the more iconic episodes just in the nature of the plot.
And I want to say too much, but it's it's a good one. We got we got a real not to say this wasn't a good one, but we got another good one next week. I really like this this past episode, the election, I thought it again was I was timely. I really enjoyed watching. I enjoyed watching the characters. So thankful that you came and joined us on our show. Read. Thank you. Read would love to have you on the show again.
When we're not talking politics and we can kind of just have not that we didn't have fun, but I didn't know I did I didn't want you to feel like we had you on just because you're our our political analyst.
I appreciate you guys. I mean, if you told my fourteen year old self that I was going to be going on a podcast to talk about Zach Morris as a former White House spokesman, I'm not sure which part of that would have been the most confusing.
Probably probably the word podcast. What's a podcast? Yeah, well, thanks again. Thank you, Reed. Thank you. Mark Hall and the listener. And we'll see you next week. Zach to the Future is a production of Cames Thirteen. It's executive produced by Paul Goslar, myself and Chris Walker, Production and direction led by Terrence Mangan, Editing and Mastering by Handey Jenniskens. Engineering and Production Coordination by Sean Cherry. Artwork by Kurt Courtney with illustrations by Jeff MacCarthy.
Marketing is led by Joseph Francis with PR by Hillary Shupe. Thanks to the whole team, McCain is their thirteen. And to you for listening.