A Wacky Path for Politics
Memo: ELECTION 2000
Before I analyze the presidential election, I want to make a statement, on behalf of South Florida, to the state and local candidates who ran all those TV ads, especially Elaine Bloom, Clay Shaw, Bill McCollum, and Bill Nelson: We hope that you and all your media advisers rot in Campaign Hell, okay? We hope that demons tape your eyelids open and force you to watch your own TV commercials. We hope that every thousand years, the demons hold an election to decide which one of you should be allowed to leave Campaign Hell, and the winner is always: None of the Above.
There! I feel better! Now, let's analyze the presidential election. As you can imagine, I was up all night scrutinizing the returns. (NOTE TO EDITOR: The truth is, I'm writing this while the polls are still open. I don't plan to watch the returns. I plan to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and be asleep by 9:15 P.M. So I need some help finishing this analysis.)
The key to presidential elections is the Electoral College, an institution created by the Founding Fathers so that Tim Russert would have something to talk about. Under this system, each state receives a certain number of electoral votes, based on how stupid the state's motto is. Thus, New York (motto: "Driver Carries No Cash") has 33 electoral votes; whereas North Dakota (motto: "Coming Soon -- Plumbing!") has none.
This system can produce some quirky results. In 1884, the Electoral College declared that Grover Cleveland was the winner, even though it turned out that there was no such person. Later, the Electoral College got a bee in its bonnet and elected Franklin D. Roosevelt president twenty-seven times in a row. Still later, it elected Richard M. Nixon, despite abundant documented evidence that he was Richard M. Nixon.
So the Electoral College may seem to be a wacky way to elect a president. But it's better than any other system on earth, except the system we use to fill every other office. And because of this system, one of the keys to Tuesday's election was the 25 electoral votes of Florida (motto: "Drugs Are Legal, but God Help You If You Get Caught with a Citrus Tree!").
To win Florida, both candidates needed the support of our 398 million elderly residents, all of whom vote. Voting is one of their major forms of entertainment, along with eating dinner at 4:30 P.M. and failing to notice green lights while sitting behind the wheels of their 1986 Oldsmobiles. To win the votes of these people, both Al Gore and George W. Bush promised that, if elected, they would have the government give the elderly huge quantities of drugs. So one definite outcome of the election is that, for the next four years, our seniors, God bless them, will be stoned out of their gourds. This will probably improve their driving.
But the elderly vote was only one of many factors that determined the outcome of the election, which is why all the experts said it was "too close to call." What a bunch of morons. I predicted the outcome of this election right on the money in a column I wrote on April 17, 1997. My exact words were: "The next president of the United States will definitely be (NOTE TO EDITOR: Please insert the winner's name here)."
The question now is: What lies ahead for the nation, with this man at the helm? What kind of a man IS this man, assuming that he is, in fact, a man? The answers will determine the future of this great nation, and we all, as Americans, must think about them very hard. But right now, Buffy is starting.
Copyright © 2003 by Dave Barry
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The New York Times calls him "the funniest man in America," and his legions of fans agree, laughing and snorting as they put his books on bestseller lists nationwide. In Boogers Are My Beat, Dave gives us the real scoop on: The scientific search for the world's funniest joke (you can bet it includes the word weasel); RV camping in the Wal-Mart parking lot; Outwitting smart kitchen appliances and service contracts; Elections in Florida ("You can't spell Florida without duh"); The Olympics, where people from all over the world come together to accuse each other of cheating; The truth about the Dakotas, the Lone Ranger, and feng shui; The choice between death and taxes; And much, much more--including some truths about journalism and serious thoughts about 9/11. Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988, and his columns are syndicated in more than 500 newspapers. His most recent books, Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down and the novels Big Trouble and Tricky Business, were national bestsellers. He lives in Miami, Floriduh.
