How to decide who to vote for
I don’t normally touch politics on this blog, but this excerpt from Matt Ruff’s novel Sewer, Gas & Electric—written in 1997, set in 2023—was too good to pass up:
…Lexa asked her computer to run a program called SumpPumpGraphics. “Working,” the computer replied, and on its main monitor drew comic strip images of the seven Democratic presidential candidates, seated as if for a debate of their own. When Lexa fed copies of their stump speeches into an optical scanner, dialogue balloons appeared above the seated figures, sized in proportion to the wordiness of the speeches. The largest balloon belonged to President Hackett, a dark horse opportunist who on separate occasions had claimed to be a native of eighteen different states, including Belgium, which had apparently been admitted to the Union when no one else was looking.
“Ready cull feature,” Lexa said.
“Cull feature ready. Average speech length at start is three thousand, six hundred, and seventeen words.”
“Cull salutations, jokes, and needless historical anecdotes. Ditto quotations and statistics that don’t directly support a platform point. Cull platitudes and non-sequiturs. Cull reiterations of obvious facts. Cull redundancies. Cull misleading statements and outright lies, but flag them for later.”
“Working,” the computer said, and the dialogue balloons shrank drastically. “Culling completed. Average speech length is now two hundred and seven words.”
“Cull and flag impossible promises. Also cull promises that fail a vagueness test.”
“What is my threshold of acceptable vagueness?”
“Let’s not be too stringent. Cull anything that rates below a four on the Thatcher Hem-Haw Scale.”
“Loading THS parameters. Working.” The dialogue balloons became tiny dots. “Culling completed. Average speech length is now twenty-two words.”
Lexa took a laser pen and pointed it at the cartoon figure that represented candidate Harmon Fox. Fox recited the bare bones version of his stump speech: “If elected, I will raise taxes against the rich, cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs, and plant one million trees.”
Lexa shifted the light beam to candidate Nan Sheffield. “If elected,” Sheffield promised, “I will raise taxes against the rich, cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs, and plant two million trees.”
A bidding war. Lexa tapped Preston Hackett next and was surprised to hear the shortest speech thus far: “If elected, I will raise taxes against the rich and cut military spending in favor of social welfare programs.”
“Nothing about trees?” Lexa asked.
“Candidate Hackett’s sole reference to trees,” the computer replied, “was that he had a plan to reforest the Great Plains. That statement did not survive culling.”
