Jonny Smith, the principal character in Stephen King’s ‘The Dead Zone’, awakes from a coma with the power to see into a person’s future by touching them.
It starts in hospital where he forsees a nurse’s house is on fire with her child in it.
His premonition is correct and the child is saved.
He becomes a national celebrity and is able to help the police solve a serious crime in a rural backwater.
However when he turns his attention to politicians, the fun really starts.
The novel was written in the 1970’s, the era of Nixon, Ford and Carter.
Smith encounters candidate Carter on the campaign trail, shakes his hand and sees that the peanut farmer will become President but encounters no feelings of malevolence.
His next handshake is much more frightening.
Greg Stillson is starting his climb to the top by running for Congress as an outsider with a set of populist policies.
Sound familiar?
Smith shakes Stillson’s hand at a rally and has a terrible vision of a future President Stillson launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
Smith then has a dilemma. Should he take action to prevent this happening?
He consults his doctor, a Polish survivor of the Nazi invasion and poses the question, knowing what you know now, would you go back in time and assasinate Hitler?
You will have to pick up a copy of King’s bestselling novel to find out what happens next, but reading it recently for the second time got me thinking how we could do with a Jonny Smith in the current General Election campaign.
I don’t think he would discover a candidate as evil as the fictional Greg Stillson, (at least I hope not), but his special handshake might at least reveal which ones are going to stick to their campaign promises.
Without that clairvoyance, we will have to rely on body language, intuition or our gut feelings.
My gut feeling is that we need a strong group of committed liberal politicians in Parliament after May 7th.
That is why I am campaigning for the Liberal Democrats.
* David Warren is a lifetime political activist for progressive causes and a liberal.