Honolulu Lite
Race for guv is
a battle of the coolestPeople just wanna be cool. And the way to be cool is to be around cool people. For voters, that means voting for the coolest candidate.
The biggest issue in the race for governor is which candidate is the coolest. Which one has the coolest friends?
Not many commentators are willing to discuss the "cool factor" in politics. They are too busy trying to be cool by discussing boring things like the candidates' positions on "important issues."
You know what an important issue is? It's whatever the political pundits say it is. It's like that old saying, "When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you." Education, the environment, the economy, affordable drugs for senior citizens ... we are told those are the important issues. But let's be honest here. Most voters, especially the younger ones, didn't like education when they were getting it and would prefer not to think about it now. The environment is all that stuff whizzing by the SUV window while the voter blasts the air conditioner and stereo. The economy? Most people can't figure out the complexities of obtaining a Costco card and the economic experts couldn't even see the Enron collapse coming. And let's not even talk about affordable drugs for seniors. What about affordable drugs for everybody else?
No. The key issue is how cool are the candidates. And the candidates know that. That's why former President Clinton is in town. Clinton's cool. He hangs with movie stars. Plays the sax. And if he can't be with the one he loves, he loves the one he's with.
Democrat Mazie Hirono is hoping some of Clinton's coolness will rub off on her. ("Bill came all the way to Hawaii just for ME! Isn't that so cool?")
It is. And a lot of voters wanting to enjoy any residual coolness of that relationship no doubt will vote for Mazie.
Linda Lingle's got problems in the Cool Department. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is supposed to come to Hawaii to help her out. But Giuliani, despite being "America's Mayor," is still kind of a nerd. There's no cool there.
Hawaii sumo superstar Konishiki is doing commercials for Lingle. That's pretty cool. If this were Japan, it would be WAY cool. I suspect people in Hawaii don't appreciate how cool having a champion sumo wrestler on your team is.
Superstar actor Robert Redford is doing radio commercials for Congressman Neil Abercrombie. This is a waste of cool. Abercrombie's race, besides being a lock, isn't even on the national radar. Rolling out Redford for this match-up is like putting NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon in your kid's go-cart pit crew. (OK. I guess that would be cool.)
The trick for candidates in the last days of a campaign is to maintain their cool. If they resort to last-minute smears and anonymous slander, voters should give them the cold shoulder, no matter how cool they are.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com