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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Hawaii could put
Ralph Nader in
White House. Right.While some cynics might allege that Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is in Hawaii this weekend as part of an elaborate freebie vacation financed by campaign contributors, I, being the astute political analyst that I am, can see it as a splendid counterintuitive maneuver that just might put him into the White House.
First, put it out of your mind that Nader came here for vacation. Look at the man. He hasn't taken a vacation in his life. If he were to walk onto Waikiki Beach without his trademark undertaker's suit on, he'd burst into flames. I'm sure that Nader, who first made his name as a consumer protector extraordinaire in the 1960s with the publication of his Chevrolet-bashing book "Unsafe at Any Speed," considers direct sunlight equally dangerous ("Sunshine: Unsafe at Any UV Level").
I will give odds that Nader has never consumed an alcoholic beverage containing a large piece of fruit and a paper umbrella. His only thought upon visiting the sheer cliffs of the Pali Lookout likely would be that tourists should be issued airbags.
So, if Nader isn't here on vacation, he must need Hawaii to get elected president.
Now, most political analysts will say Nader doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Kilauea Crater of getting elected president. And if he did, he certainly wouldn't squander precious campaign time in Hawaii, a state where, by the time we vote for president, the election is over and everyone else in the country is in bed in their jammies.
Nader, I suspect, has devised a clever way to make Hawaii the most important state in the election process. And it's all based on that crazy-quilt system of vote-getting called the Electoral College.
IN THE 2000 election, it came as a surprise to many people (Al Gore in particular) that American presidents are not chosen by popular vote. That would be too simple and fair and take all the fun away from conspiracy theorists.
No, our presidential election system was developed by the same people who wrote the Internal Revenue Code. So, instead of simply counting everyone's vote and letting the dude (or dudette) with the most votes become president, it works like this: Every state is given so many electoral votes. These votes are based on the number of members they have in Congress, divided by number of feet above sea level their state is at, multiplied by the number of Taco Bells within the state, minus a random number chosen by physicist Stephen Hawking and added to the square root of the number of goats living in the continental United States. As a result, California has 54 electoral votes and Hawaii has a measly four. Yes, it's unfair and weird, but, hey, that's democracy for you.
Nader's plan is to simply have the International Date Line moved so that the people of Hawaii vote FIRST, instead of last, and use our four electoral votes to launch a juggernaut that sweeps up the electoral votes in the other states. It's a brilliant plan, hinging on that one tiny detail of shifting the date line.
That's why Ralph Nader is in Hawaii today, and I just want to thank the future president for finally bringing Hawaii the power and attention it deserves. Hawaii loves you, man. Just remember: Use sunscreen.
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Charles Memminger, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' 2004 First Place Award winner for humor writing, appears Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com