Is it just me, or is Bob Dole really a computer masquerading as a Presidential candidate?
When you look at some of the statements he has made on the campaign trail, it's hard not to wonder. Most people just shook their heads when Dole commented that, "The Net is a wonderful way to get on the Web," sadly clucking about the nonsense that people unfamiliar with the latest technology sometimes come up with.
However, the statement would make perfect sense if it had been created by a computer programmed to randomly generate phrases. Say the basic structure for the sentence had been pre-programmed, but the nouns and verbs were randomly chosen from a list of hundreds of different words. Dole might just as easily have said, "Pomegranites are a wonderful way to talk to the federal debt."
Or: "Flat taxation is a wonderful way to undulate your Aunt Bertha's hot tub."
Or, even: "Hollywood is a wonderful way to downsize dragonflies."
How very much like English! Of course, nobody expects such results to actually make sense; they usually read more like electronic haiku. If you had inadvertently mistaken such a computer program for a human being, however...
Not convinced? There's more. Remember the time Dole told a campaign crowd, "Like everyone in this room, I was born..."? Even though political discourse in the United States is not especially sophisticated, you would not expect a candidate for the highest office to argue that he should be elected based on knowledge any competent seven year-old could be expected to know.
Now, if Dole was really a computer, his statement would make perfect sense. We've all experienced having our system crash, freezing our screen while we were in the middle of expressing a thought. Unfortunately, in the midst of a heavily contested Presidential campaign, stopping to reload your programming makes you look, well, foolish. (This incident also suggests that, if Dole really is a computer, he's running Windows 95.)
How about his imprecations against the media? "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he said. Then, again, "Don't read that stuff. Don't watch television. You make up your own mind. Don't let them make up your mind for you." And so on, and so on. Isn't the fact that Dole kept coming back to this theme throughout the campaign evidence of a programming loop that repeated itself over and over again?
And haven't you ever wondered about Dole's habit of speaking of himself in the third person? (Example: "There's a myth that Bob Dole is mean.") Obviously, the computer is talking about the real, human Dole, who, we can only hope, is safe wherever he is being kept for the duration of the campaign.
If all this isn't convincing enough, what are we supposed to make of the following Dole speech: "My wife was here six days last week, and she'll be back next week, and she does an outstanding job. And when I'm elected, she will not be in charge of health care. Don't worry about it. Or in charge of anything else. I didn't say that. It did sort of go through my mind. But she may have a little blood bank in the white house. But that's all right. We need it. It doesn't cost you anything. These days, it's not all you give to the White House -- your blood. You have to give your file. I keep wondering if mine's down there. Or my dog. I got a dog named Leader. He's a schnauzer. I think he's been cleared. We've had him checked out by the vet but not by the FBI or the White House. He may be suspect, but in any event, we'll get into that later. Animal rights or something of that kind. But this is a very serious election."
The disconnected, rambling sentences. The tortured syntax. Could this be anything other than a computer-generated short story. (You know the type: "Bob and Frank went to the Sunshine State for a vacation. The sun is very hot in the desert. I like tangerine jello for dessert. Tangerines are good for people with a vitamin C++ deficiency to eat...")
There's no way around it: Bob Dole is a computer. The other possible explanation for his behaviour is, for the Republican Party, too horrible to contemplate.
