By Andrew Cline on 6.2.08 @ 12:07AM
Senator Clinton promises to make every Democratic primary voter in Montana and South Dakota "president for five minutes."
PIERRE, S.D. -- Sensing the Democratic presidential nomination
slipping from her grasp, Sen. Hillary Clinton this morning made an
unprecedented promise to the voters of the final two Democratic
presidential primaries of 2008. If elected president, she says, she
will make every Democratic primary voter in Montana and South
Dakota "president for five minutes."
"A lot of candidates say that a vote for them is a vote to
empower the little guy," Clinton said during a press conference
held in a room inside her campaign headquarters here that was
redesigned to look like the Oval Office. "But only by voting for me
will you get to wield actual power. You will get to personally run
the country for five minutes."
To demonstrate how the plan would work, Clinton sat a voter in
the president's chair in the mock-up Oval Office.
"Okay, Fred, you've got five minutes," Clinton said. "Go for
it."
The voter, Fred Testerman, 54, of Pierre, looked blankly at
Clinton for four seconds before saying, "Yeah. OK. Um... Well,
first off, can you show me them alien pictures?"
"I can do whatever you want, Fred, you're the president,
remember?" Clinton responded.
"Oh, yeah. Well, in that case, get me a bourbon on the rocks,
the good stuff," Testerman said. "And I want to try a Cuban cigar,
I know you've got to have one around here somewhere. If not, ship a
box to my house. And I want to see that Marilyn Monroe movie
everyone's been talking about, you know the one I mean. And get me
some stationery, I want to write a letter to that jerk Roy Boscoe
who said in 10th grade that I'd never amount to anything. Oh, and
get them alien pictures!"
Constitutional scholars said Sen. Clinton's offer is blatantly
unconstitutional as the Constitution requires that presidents be
elected by the Electoral College, not appointed by a sitting
president.
"There's no way she can legally appoint someone president, even
for five minutes," Dartmouth Professor Terence Tittlethwait said.
"She could let people sit in the big chair, I suppose, but she
can't give them real power."
Clinton brushed aside such concerns.
"If Bush can be appointed by the Supreme Court, I don't see why
I can't appoint people who also didn't get elected," she said.
Montana has an open primary, which means that all 628,000
registered voters could vote on Tuesday and earn their five minutes
in the Oval Office. South Dakota has a closed primary, so only the
state's 195,000 registered Democrats would be eligible.
If every eligible voter took part in tomorrow's primaries,
Clinton would be obligated to let 823,000 people be president for
five minutes. At 288 people a day, Clinton would need 2,858 days to
give every voter his or her promised five minutes. That's 7.8
years, which would leave her just 2.4 months to govern on her own,
assuming she is elected to two terms. Clinton said she was fine
with that.
"This isn't about me," she said. "This is about empowering real
Americans. It's about delivering on promises that have been made to
the American people for generations but never kept. It's about
democracy. It's about making real change in this great country of
ours and giving the people a voice. It's about making a more
hopeful America, an America where the common man finally has a say.
Let's see, did I leave out any cliches? Nope, I think that does it.
Now where are my lawyers, we've got some small print to
create."
Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton's rival for the nomination, called
the promise "a regrettable publicity stunt that is unworthy of Sen.
Clinton and her campaign. We expected more from a woman of her
stature and dignity. OK, so maybe we didn't, but this is still
really pathetic."
topics:
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court
