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I had just moved to a new school, the past few months had not been easy for me, and I wanted new leadership to have a solution. Especially if it involved brainwashing my Latin teacher.
One candidate stuck in my mind because she spent the day of the election handing out lollipops and asking people to vote for her. Apparently, she thought she could represent the Lollipop Guild. (The Lollipop Guild? The Lollipop Guild!) And in the name of the Lollipop Guild, this student handed out candy to every student in our class.
I was a bit stunned. After all, we were now in ninth grade, so it was obvious that we were adults. We should have been focused on serious adult business, like organizing a really fun class trip, trying to get some rules changed to let us leave campus midday, and making sure that we had enough fundraising for whatever we wanted to do. I was disappointed to find that people decided that, rather
Things haven't changed much since high school.
To be fair, it's not as if bribery was an original idea of my classmates. Political bribery has been going on as long as politics itself, ever since Thag Thaggerson handed out a few chunks of mammoth to become cave leader.
And heck, sometimes the bribes aren't even an attempt to get elected, but just an attempt to keep the populace placated. Caesar gave his people bread and circuses, thereby not only founding one of the first whole food markets but also distracting them from their disappearing freedoms.
I certainly don't mean to compare our current president to Caesar. After all, Caesar was a brilliant military strategist and wore plants on his head instead of being named after one. But one can't deny that Bush's "economic stimulus" rebate looks an awful lot like someone handing out $600 lollipops, which is a fair bit of bread. And goodness knows the current administration has the circus part covered.
But the reign of this particular Caesar is about to end, which is why we should be more worried about the lollipops being handed out by the next crop of presidential hopefuls.
In a move that has been criticized almost universally by economists, McCain and Clinton have each proposed temporarily suspending the gas tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The average American would save up to 30 cents a day under this plan, which they can then use to go out and buy a lollipop.
And lollipops are tasty! Everyone wants a free lollipop! Sure, this may take $9 billion or so away from federal highway funds, but hey, lollipop! And sure, you could argue (as experts across the country, be they Republican, Democrat, or Independent, have) that this pittance does nothing to address the real issue causing a rise in gas prices, and indeed only encourages more consumption of an ever-dwindling resource when we should be focusing our energies on conservation and more efficient use of oil.
But hey, lollipop! What does it matter that gas prices in America have been kept artificially low, and that's why we have much worse fuel efficiency than places like Europe, where gas costs what it should? Fixing problems is really tough. And suggesting that America needs to change the way it thinks about and uses oil ... that's just not going to be popular. We love oil! If oil were running for president, we'd probably elect it instead.
That's why McCain and Clinton have decided not to risk asking us to do anything tough. They've taken a more reliable, time-tested route. They're going to ignore the problem and offer everyone a lollipop right before the election. Well, I've been calling them lollipops, but there's another name for that candy:
They're called suckers.
Seth Brown is an award-winning humor writer, the author of "Rhode Island Curiosities," and he hopes we get this gas tax issue licked. His column appears weekly in the Transcript and weakly on his Web site, www.Ri singPun.com.
