In case you missed it, Ed Muskie last month endorsed independent Eliot Cutler for governor.

This is remarkable for a number of reasons. For one thing, Muskie – the former governor, U.S. senator and secretary of state – was one of the founders of the modern Democratic Party in Maine. His loyalty to its nominees is legendary. For another, although Cutler makes much of having once worked for Muskie, that was long before the candidate gave up public service for high-paying jobs with the influence-peddling industry in places like China.

And finally, there’s the little matter of mortality.

The Muskie in question died in 1996.

The Muskie who drafted the endorsement (published as an op-ed in the March 28 Bangor Daily News) is his son, Edmund Junior, known as Ned. “Were he alive today, I believe [Muskie Senior] would proudly support Eliot for governor,” Junior wrote, dismissing the environmental groups that are backing Democratic hopeful Mike Michaud as “purely partisan,” a claim his Dem-to-the-core dad might have found amusing.

There’s an ironic footnote to all this: One person (among many) who will certainly not be voting for Cutler this November is Ned Muskie, who’s a resident of Washington, D.C.

Still, the exhumation of a Maine political icon to advance the electability of a current candidate has its appeal. Unlike the endorsements of living people, there’s no way the deceased can make comments that might embarrass the campaign, get caught in unseemly liaisons or be indicted for legal transgressions. In nearly every way, the residents of cemetery row have to be considered superior endorsers when compared to the living.

Which explains the work crew busy digging up Margaret Chase Smith. Smith, the former Republican U.S. senator, hasn’t held elected office since 1972 and cast off this mortal coil in 1995, but she’s still regarded with reverence by many older Mainers. As a result all three campaigns booked se?ances in hopes of convincing her spirit to bless one of them. To date, Smith has been unresponsive, but once Cutler, Michaud and GOP Gov. Paul LePage start pounding on her coffin lid, they may make enough noise to wake the dead.

Campaign-funded mediums have also made similar efforts to bring forth the specters of such deceased Maine political luminaries as Percival Baxter (former governor, creator of Baxter State Park; packed it in back in 1969), Thomas Brackett Reed (former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives; bought the farm in 1902), William Pitt Fessenden (ex-U.S. senator and secretary of the treasury during the Civil War; croaked in 1869) and John Baldacci (ex-congressman and governor; refuses to stay dead in spite of repeated attempts to bury him).

There’s nothing like being placed in a grave to enhance somebody’s popular appeal.

By comparison, having some living politician say nice things about you is virtually worthless. Ask any Democrat running in Lewiston whether they’d rather have the endorsement of state Senate President Justin Alfond (technically alive) or former state Rep. Louis Jalbert (indefinitely postponed in 1989), and they’ll tell you the Jalbert legacy of backroom wheeling and dealing is still worth a few thousand more votes.

Former Portland mayor, governor and U.S. Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster (hammered out of order back in 1976) may have been a front man for the Ku Klux Klan, a tool for Howard Hughes’ enemies and a bag man for Richard Nixon, but his GOP ghost is still guaranteed to draw bigger crowds to campaign rallies than Republican congressional candidates Bruce Poliquin, Kevin Raye and Isaac Misiuk combined.

This unearths (ha!) another matter. If the dear decaying departed make the best endorsers, doesn’t it follow that they would also make the finest candidates. Instead of Eliot Cutler, we’d have Nathan Cutler, a Democratic governor the people never got tired of because he served less than three months in office in 1829 and 1830. In place of LePage, there’d be Hannibal Hamlin, a Republican who quit after a few weeks to become a U.S. senator and eventually Lincoln’s first vice president. Substitute William King, Maine’s first governor in 1820, for Michaud, and not only do you get a personage later relied upon by the federal government to negotiate a difficult treaty with Spain, but also a registered Democratic-Republican Party member. Can’t get more bipartisan than that.

Setting aside the small problems of musty odors, worms, spiders and rats (issues no worse than those plaguing most meetings of the Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs), corpses would appear to offer a vastly improved option for operating state government. It’s well past time we repealed the term limits arbitrarily imposed by their life spans, and gave back control to our ancestors.

Bring on the zombie apocalypse.

Maybe we could get an endorsement for that idea from some actors on “The Walking Dead.”

Bits of graveyard gravitas can be emailed to me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.