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SQUARE PEGS, OVAL OFFICES
A guide to the 2000 election
By tomorrow this whole sordid mess will be over, and we'll know who will succeed William J. Clinton as President of the United States of America.
Polls show the Elephant car and the Ass car in a dead heat in the closest presidential race in recent memory (although the driver of the former is drunk at the wheel, and the tires of the latter are Firestones). One candidate could win the popular vote and the other the electoral college. Or they could tie in the electoral college, which would move the vote to the House, which is also up in the air. Or they could tie in the House, which would move the vote to the Senate. In one far-fetched scenario, 98-year-old Strom Thurmond of South Carolina could be the next Chief Executive.
(This is not a joke. In fact, Strom is more likely to be the next President than some of the candidates on the ballot).
The point is, it's important to a) vote, and b) vote responsibly. This is not the year to write in Kirby Puckett or Joe Walsh or your Uncle Murray.
So whom to vote for: the crypto-Fascist columnist, the idle rich bête noîre, the Edisonian second banana, or the crusading celibate?
As a public service, I offer the following voter's guide to the four major candidates. To maintain journalistic objectivity I have listed them in alphabetical order, NOT in reverse order of my own preference (that it happened to work out that way is a convenient coincidence):
You should vote for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan if you:
Wear a white sheet on your head on days other than Halloween
Pitch in the bullpen for the Atlanta Braves
Broke from the National Rifle Association, the damned liberals
Operate a paramilitary compound somewhere in Idaho
You should vote for Republican candidate George W. Bush if you:
Would hire someone to work for you who has three arrests on his resume
Can say honestly that he doesn't seem like a cross between his father and his father's vice president
Find him sexy
Portrayed Moses in the film "The Ten Commandments"
Thought he did a really good job as owner of the Texas Rangers
Thought he did a really good job as governor of Texas
Are among the two million Americans who stand to gain from his tax plan
Plan to become one of the two million Americans who stand to gain from his tax plan through shrewd investing via a flashy online brokerage firm -- just like said firm promised in its ads
Prefer, aesthetically, the look of oil derricks to the Alaskan mountain ranges
Know the secret handshake of the Skull & Bones society
Want our next six Supreme Court vacancies to be filled with Dracon, Hammurabi, Judge Judy, Reggie White, and the two balcony-dwelling old timers from "The Muppet Show"
Trust with our nuclear secrets a functional analphabetic
Are nostalgic for the good ol' days of the Bush Administration
You should vote for Democratic candidate Al Gore if you:
Believe that prevarication, topic evasion, and bold-faced lying are useful traits in a politician
Can tolerate a First Lady whose nickname is a punchline to many jokes involving cows
Can tolerate a First Lady whose claim to fame is the parental warning label on Allen Iverson's new CD
Anticipate four more years of peace, bull markets, and technological advancement
Lick your lips contemplating a "Daughters of Gore" Vanity Fair cover spread
Can't wait to see what the mad inventor comes up with next (A transporter device like the one on "Star Trek?"
Think he'll do as good a job out of Bill Clinton's prodigious shadow as Al Groh has out of Bill Parcells's
Are terrified that Bush will win
You should vote for Green candidate Ralph Nader if you:
Believe, as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt did, that the two-party system is ineffectual
Live in the East Village
Listen to your conscience rather than The New York Times
Hate big corporations, campaign finance corruption, and pollution
Smoke pot a lot
Support the Motor Vehicle Highway Safety Acts, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act -- all of which were spearheaded by Nader
Think the minimum hourly wage should be greater than or equal to the cost of one ticket to see "Charlie's Angels"
Value your privacy
Feel it's wrong to spend billions of dollars on the military when the U.S. has no viable enemy (now that the blind prophet who masterminded the World Trade Center bombings is safely incarcerated at Arkham Asylum) when our children are starving, our public housing and transportation need a major overhaul, and our health care system sucks
I hope this has been helpful. Next week, Yours Truly promises to stop writing about the election. (Unless, of course, the felonious Governor Bush wins, in which case you can expect a how-to column on attaining Canadian citizenship).
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By Greg Olear
110700 |
