by Michael Finley
Copyright © 1999 by Michael Finley

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Stimulate the economy, give a poet a dollar.

This year's Metamoron Awards -- awarded annually by the Why Things Don't Work Institute to organizations and individuals that typify brutal change or leadership in denial -- were difficult to compile.

Perhaps it was such an intense year, bracketed at each end by the fury of impeachment and the insanity of millennium fever. They were such headstrong times, it was hard to get upset about conventional misbehavior. So we will begin with the most obvious offenders.

1. On the corporate side, it was a given that Microsoft would nab a Metamoron. But for what? The antitrust trial spun off story after story of the anticompetitive mischief wrought by Bill Gates' company -- making it a nightmare for consumers to combine Microsoft's products with other companies' products. On the other hand, the companies that ganged up to testify against Microsoft either were guilty of the same sorts of infractions, or were innocent solely for lack of opportunity. In the end, what won this year's award was Microsoft's decision to invest $700,000 to campaign for a lower operating budget for the very trust unit assigned to investigate it. Talk about money misspent.

2. The mega-merger of Sprint and MCI, likewise, clearly merits a Metamoron. The largest corporate merger in history, it signals the determined view of large companies that they can still be competitive if they are only twice as large as they are now. History, and the fossil record, do not smile on this theory. The good news is, one less standup comedian will be doing long distance commercials.

3. But the big winner this year is Big Politics, corrupted to its ears by nepotism, celebrity, and money. Nearly every candidate this time around campaigns on the shoulders of someone else, on the wings of irrelevant fame, or with the thrust power of megabucks.

Nepotism first. Dan Quayle and George W. Bush stood on the shoulders of their political, and in Bush's case, biological, father -- a family tradition with the Bushes.

Malcolm Forbes, Jr. campaigned by the financial graces of his father Malcolm Forbes, Sr. This is especially galling because Junior is throwing Senior's millions at causes Senior opposed while breathing. Astonishingly, Junior, who comes across as FDR on bennies, is campaigning as a cultural conservative occupying ideological terrain to the right of Jerry Falwell. Senior, who was anything but a cultural conservative, and gayer than a three thousand dollar bill, must blanche at Junior's call for people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton campaigned on the shoulders of their husbands. It is a foregone conclusion that Hilary Clinton's arrogance in claiming the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat in New York will fail. The public may not hate hubris across the board, but we clearly hate it in ambitious women. If only Bill Clinton had died in office, that would be one thing, and voters would sweep her into office in her widow's grief. Of course, Clinton will likely die in Nelson Rockefeller style, in the arms of the woman he loves, that day.

Hate to say it, but Clinton dying in office would also provide a boost for Al Gore, who looks uncomfortable standing on Clinton's shoulders while still alive. It's a dicey maneuver, condemning his alpha mentor's moral disgrace but taking full advantage of his fundraising and dealcutting prowess.

They say it's not what you know but who you know. The reliance on celebrity is nearly as dismaying as the reliance on relatives. This is especially true in George W. Bush's case, because it is apparent not only that he does not know very much about governing, or world affairs, or how to handle the press -- but judging from his omnipresent smirk, that he doesn't care. He's got all that money, and all this time, and he's frittering both away. But that's OK -- the fix is most definitely in.

Finally there is fame. Bill Bradley has cashed in his career as NBA player for a $30 million presidential war chest.

And there is the spectacle, straight out of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, of media figures floating trial balloons for their candidacies: Cybil Shepherd, Warren Beatty, Donald Trump, and on the gubernatorial levels Arnold Schwartzneggar (California), Charles Barkley (Alabama), and Jesse Ventura (Minnesota). Because if they snap their fingers, the media are there for them. Ours is becoming government by marquee.

Poor John McCain, who earned his small portion of fame the old-fashioned way -- by spending 5 and a half years in a prison camp in Hanoi. But it don't mean a thing without that old dough-re-mi. In fact, George W.'s people floated the thought that suffering for his country makes McCain suspect goods. A draft evader, it stands to reason, enjoys better mental health.

Poor Pat Buchanan, lacking money and portfolio, needed to play the Hitler card -- and badly -- to get media attention. Hitler, for his part, saw his silver set attract top auction prices in November. Genocide? Just another pathway to celebrity.

Setting aside nepotism and fame, the killer problem in politics remains money. Elizabeth Dole, widely thought to be the second most electable candidate on the GOP side, beating Gore in every poll taken, shut down her campaign in October when her money dried up.

4. The penultimate Metamoron of the Millennium goes to the U.S. Senate, in particular to Senators Trent Lott and Jesse Helms, for their vision in rejecting the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in October.

Their thinking went like this: The treaty is unverifiable (true), so why take a chance on getting coldcocked by a nuclear cheater? Rather than look foolish at the moment of Armageddon, they voted to kill the arms talks, transmitting a chilly wave to every cranny of the world, including Pakistan, which has the bomb, and which experienced a coup d'etat the week of the vote.

The vote reverberated with the hate and vituperation that characterized the entire year. Indeed, as the thousand year reich winds down, hopefully with a whimper and not a bang, the political establishment seems paralyzed by the prospect of real change. The great paradox is that two parties regarded by most observers as virtually identical in ideology and approach should be at such bitter loggerheads.

And these are our leaders.

5. But the Grand Metamoron waited till year's end to reveal itself. In December, protesters in Seattle pulled the curtain away from the World Trade Organization, which thought it had laid the foundations for a secure and profitable new world order.