I'VE decided that the answer to all of Hawaii's problems is to remain in a permanent state of election campaigning. Election time is the
season for miraclesIt's a magical time. Amazing things happen. The economy improves overnight. Land held for a hundred years is simply returned to its rightful owners. Famous people suddenly show up in droves.
I don't know what it is about election season that suddenly makes all our problems melt away like snow on Mauna Kea on a sunny day. But we need more of it. Sure, there are outsiders, like Orson Swindell, who returned home specifically to campaign for local Republican politicians. But all these other guys, the Jacksons, the Gores and the Babbitts, are just here by happy coincidence.
It's a wonderful thing. There was Al Gore, who is so animated when he speaks now that he looks as if 3,000 amps of electricity are flowing through him. I guess he just couldn't keep up that wooden act any longer. He had to let his true, energetic self free. Still, it's a bit weird to see him shouting and gesticulating. Kind of like seeing Mr. Rogers break-dancing.
Then we have the Rev. Jesse Jackson showing up at a "labor rally" that just happens to feature the governor. Someone didn't clue Jesse in that our economic hard times are over.
Gov. Cayetano says the economy isn't an issue anymore. The Hawaii economy has turned the corner, he says. I think it turned the corner at exactly 3:56 p.m. last Tuesday somewhere around Kapiolani Boulevard. It didn't so much turn a corner as wheel around a hairpin turn with tires screeching.
It was an economic miracle, the type of miracle that usually only manifests itself when blood seeps from the eyes of the statue of Alan Greenspan in the courtyard of the Federal Reserve. Someone should call Liberty House so it can cancel its bankruptcy proceedings. And all the other businesses that have been struggling can throw away their crutches and walk! Walk! You are healed!
But, apparently, no one told Jesse. He's been to tons of Third World countries, all over the world. He knows one when he sees one. I guess he thought he had landed in one of those instead of a financially secure state like ours.
I say this because Jesse didn't talk about how great it was that the Democratic Party, after 50-odd years of control, had managed to take Hawaii to the peak of financial stability. No, Jesse lumped Hawaii in with financially imploding countries like Russia, whose idea of capitalism is a bizarre hybrid based on the teachings of Ponzi, Ronald McDonald and Wild West railroad robber barons.
Hawaii, Jesse announced, should be "bailed out" by the federal government. Bailed out? That's what they do to hopelessly backward Third World countries. The governor should have reminded Jesse that he was in Hawaii, not the Sudan.
But it's the election season and strange things happen. Why, just this week the federal government suddenly gave 900 acres of land back to the Hawaiians! Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt apparently just found the deed to the Barbers Point land in the bottom of his briefcase and decided to hightail it immediately to Hawaii to personally hand it over to the Hawaiians.
It's great to know that there are now 900 more acres of land that Hawaiians own. The fact that they already technically own thousands of acres that they have not actually gotten to live on, and that federal and state governments continue to use thousands of acres of ceded lands for which the Hawaiians receive no rent doesn't really matter.
What matters is that it's an election season. All things are possible. Ain't life grand?
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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