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 | | | | | A New Gold Standard | | | Not a single Iraqi voted against Saddam Hussein in his country’s most recent poll. So why can’t American institutions also achieve his 100-percent solution? | |
| | | Oct. 21 issue — If you want to understand the triumph that is Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s re-election victory last week, consider the Big Stone Power Plant in Milbank, South Dakota. | |
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JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS ago, the Department of Energy announced that the coal-burning plant had just installed a $13.4-million, state-of-the-art pollution control device that would “remove 99.99 percent of the microscopic particulate matter—virtually eliminating a pollutant that contributes to haze and respiratory problems.” The key word there, of course, is “virtually.” Sure, the power plant’s emissions will be really, really clean, but they won’t be 100 percent clean.
“There is nothing I know of in the natural environment that is 100-percent pure,” said Gerald Groenewold, a University of North Dakota energy researcher who worked on the power plant project. Maybe he was just making excuses for an imperfect electrostatic precipitator system, but Groenewold said. “I have never seen perfection—but then again, I’ve never been to Iraq,”
That’s clear, because had Groenewold visited the country last week, he would’ve finally gotten a glimpse of that elusive notion of perfection.
There’s been a lot of ridicule in the Western press directed toward Saddam’s completely unanimous election victory last week. But the time has come for everyone to see the so-called “Butcher of Baghdad’s” victory for what it is: an unprecedented, unparalleled triumph.
To review, according to Iraqi election authorities—whose integrity I have not yet had reason to question—Saddam received every one of the 11,425,638 votes. In other words, with all precincts reporting—and look at how quickly they counted all those paper ballots: amazing efficiency!—Saddam had won the election with 100 percent. His nearest competitor—”No”—was a distant second with zero.
This stunning victory was even better than the once-thought-untoppable 99.96 percent “yes” vote Saddam received in 1996.
The State Department dismissed the vote—”It is not even worthy of our ridicule,” spokesman Richard Boucher said—but I think maybe it’s time that we acknowledge just what a feat Saddam has pulled off. Getting 100 percent of anything is tough. But Americans keep trying—and failing and then blaming everything but themselves (would Saddam do that?) Consider these examples:
1. The formula for Ivory Soap—which is famously “99 44/100 percent pure” — has not changed since 1880, according to Procter and Gamble. Certainly, though, given the remarkable advances in technology (and, as we’ve seen, power-plant design) over the years, those 56/100 percent impurities could easily be removed, right? Only, perhaps, if Saddam was running the factory.
“We can’t remove them,” said Ivory spokeswoman Traci Long. “They are critical in giving Ivory Soap its unique clean scent. To make the soap 100 percent pure, we would have to remove those essential ingredients.”
When I reminded Long that Saddam had no problem removing his countries impurities, she stopped calling me back. I say, put the Iraqi strongman in charge of the P&G Board. You’ll have pure soap in no time.
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2. I know it’s an old cliché to talk about those Trident Sugarless Gum commercials with their famous slogan, “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommended sugarless gum to their patients who chew gum.” But, as any newspaperman knows, old clichés are good clichés. And, in light of Saddam’s triumph, this one needs a second look. Before Saddam’s election, it really didn’t bother me that only 80 percent of dentists recommended sugarless gum. Before last week, that seemed like a dental landslide. But now, well, 80 percent seems downright lame.
What’s worse, what bothers me about the much-ridiculed “fifth dentist” is the unshakeable belief that the reason he didn’t join his sugarless-gum-touting colleagues was because he misunderstood what he was being asked. By the very nature of the question—”Do you recommend sugarless gum for your patients who chew gum?”—it’s understood the patient already chews gum. No amount of dental harrumphing is going to change that. So if the patient already chews gum, the question simply becomes, “Do you recommend sugarless gum or sugary gum to the patient?” Saddam Hussein can get 100 percent of the Iraqi vote, yet America’s dentists can’t unanimously agree that chewing sugarless gum is better than chewing gum with a sweetener known to cause tooth decay? I may not be a State Department flak, but I find that worthy of ridicule.
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3. Russians love their chicken, but they don’t love their chicken as much as Iraqis love their Saddam.
According to a ground-breaking report put out last year by the Russian bureau of the U.S. Council on Export of Poultry and Eggs (motto: “Eat more eggs! Eat more chicken! And export whatever you don’t eat!”), more than 98 percent of Russians “consume poultry on a regular basis.”
Now, I’ve been to Russia and know that next to the beet, the chicken is, well, next to the beet. On every plate. I mean, it’s chicken and beets, beets and chicken. Chicken on top of beets. Beets in a side dish near the chicken. But above all, the chicken is beloved. It’s eaten at every meal. There are bits of chicken floating in the municipal tap water. When street hooligans want to taunt drunks, they put a chicken on a string and drag it in front of them. That’s a chicken-loving country.
Yet not even Russia can achieve 100 percent regular chicken consumption.
“I can’t explain it,” said Toby Moore of the export council. “It’s a big country and there are some people who just don’t like chicken.” As opposed to Iraq, which is a small country where some people are chickens.
4. Paragon Computer Professionals, a New Jersey consulting firm, was so excited to have received a nearly unanimous customer satisfaction rating that it put out a press release trumpeting its “accomplishment.”
But when I read the fine print, I discovered that the “accomplishment” was merely a 98-percent satisfaction rating from prior customers. If Saddam had gotten a 98 percent, he would’ve been laughed out of office.
“Well, I guess the two percent who didn’t approve aren’t afraid of being killed for voting against us,” said Paragon executive vice president Michael Alicastro, mocking rather than admiring an election victory that makes his 98-percent satisfaction rating look as paltry as Russian poultry.
When pressed, Alicastro blamed human error for Paragon’s inability to achieve the 100-percent rating. “People are human,” he said. “There’s always one person who will be in a bad mood when we ask, ‘How good a job did Paragon do.’” Alicastro would have you believe that every single Iraqi was in a good mood on Election Day.
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5. Why can’t the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire do a better job of preparing its graduates for the “real” “world”? After all, for the second year in a row, only 99 percent of the school’s graduates had found a job. I immediately called the school’s director of career services, Jeanne Skoug, to find out what went wrong.
“Well, there’s always extenuating circumstances when you’re talking about people,” she said. “Maybe that person didn’t want to get a job. We’ve never had 100 percent.”
Skoug admitted to begrudging respect for Saddam, but claimed that he employed methods that just aren’t allowed on a college campus. “He has a different form of encouragement than we do,” she said.
6. Even pure gold isn’t as true as Saddam’s victory. According to Alan Burton of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America, when you buy “pure gold,” you’re really buying something that’s only 99.99 percent gold and .01 percent “impurity.”
“That’s as good as we can do and it’s pretty darn good,” Burton said. “There’s just a limit to our technology.” Like Skoug, he admitted that Saddam’s victory had set a new mark for excellence—something we used to call “the gold standard,” but now may have to call “the Hussein Benchmark.” “Hey, metallurgists ain’t God,” Burton said, “although our friend in the Mideast may be.”
Fortunately, there is one American political tradition that reminds us that we’re not so far away from attaining the Hussein Benchmark in our own country.
According to a report put out by Common Cause, 98 percent of the incumbents who run for re-election to the House of Representatives win. These numbers held true for both the 1998 and 2000 elections.
Celia Wexler of Common Cause said that only indictments and scandals prevented our Congressional incumbents from a Saddam-like sweep. “When it comes to maintaining a hold on power, Saddam has nothing on the U.S.,” Wexler said.
Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at www.gersh.tv
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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