Who's
that running down the alley
in the dead of Friday night
As he zippers up his trousers
in the inky slinky light
Why, of course, it's good ol' Gary
leaping over someone's fence
Yes, it's Gary, Gary Hart,
I wouldn't leave you in suspense
He likes going out to parties,
he likes be ing and Rolling Stone,
and he ran things for McGovern,
so I guess we should have known.
He likes warm and willing women,
he likes be ing where they are,
he couldn't sing,
he couldn't dance,
but he just had to be a star.
So he went into the politics game,
yes, he went into the politics game.
Warren Beatty told him,
Lookie, you can get a lot of nookie
if you get into the politics
Help me sing it now.
Guess he went into the politics game.
Oh, he went into the politics game.
Warren Beatty told him,
Lookie, you can get a lot of nookie
If you get into the politics
game.
When he landed in the Senate,
Gary started making hay.
Gary started making nearly everything
That came his way.
He liked taking a position,
but when all was said and done,
Gary's fa vorite position
was the missionary one.
Kennedy was Gary's hero
and he studied him with care,
how he stood and how he walked
and even how he wore his hair.
But the thing that thrilled him
most
and made him swear he wouldn't fail,
if he made it to the White House,
think of all the chicks he'd nail.
So he went into the politics game
Oh, he went into the politics game
Warren Beatty told him, lookie,
you can get a lot of nookie
If you get into the politics game
He met her at a party
and her name was Donna Rice
She was Gary's kind of woman,
she was pure Miami Vice
She thought he was Gary Collins
and could get her on TV
She suggested monkey business
and the rest is history
Then they caught
him making whoopie
and the campaign had to cease
He came back and tried again
but now he's gone to find some peace
He's gone back to Colorado
for a little while
And then just as soon as
he gets horny
he'll be coming back again
And he'll be running in
the politics game.
He'll be running in the politics game.
Warren Beatty, tall and looky,
you can get a lot done
if you get into the politics
game.
Thank you. There was an interview at that time in the paper with Gary
Hart's campaign manager was asked for his reaction to the song
and he felt the song was in poor
taste.
Compared to what I kept wondering.
Well, as I told him in the first house,
I never imagined to be
singing this song
so far from Manhattan.
I thought it was such a local issue
that it just wouldn't translate elsewhere,
you see, but how wrong I was. What happened was that my wife and I sublet an apartment
on the west side of Manhattan for a year,
and it was a neighborhood
heavily populated
by hard -charging young
couples.
The men all wore, you know,
wide red suspenders,
and the women all wore severe
three -piece suits and sneakers,
and and they made, you know,
pots and pots of money
which they spent with exquisite taste.
And the main thing was I didn't dare go
out of the house for a newspaper
for fear of being trampled
by them
on their way to the next million, you know.
And I thought, well, there's a song, and I wrote it,
and thought, as I say, that it would only be a local issue
but then as I experimented with singing
the song elsewhere
I found to my horror
that the rot had spread until by now
they infest every nook
nay every cranny of American life
with the single notable exception
they tell me of Santa Monica
California can can this
be so I asked myself
or or is it rather a case
of with just a place name change
or two we might have a Tragic ballad.
Tom Paxton 
