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Having voted Nov. 7 in the great state of Florida, I've been getting more than the usual number of semi-hostile e-mails from friends, some of them long incommunicado. "What the heck are Floridians doing to our country?" one sort-of-friend demanded. "Get this election thing figured out, would ya?"
I'm not complaining, though. The whole recount mess has given us a good jolt down here in the Sunshine State, where remembering to bring SPF 30 to the beach passes for a brainstorm. We all seem to be getting fresh ideas, from new theme parks ("Ride the Wild Too-Close-to-Call!") to seeing if Spain will have pity and take us back.
I've got my own modest proposal and, if I do say so, it's a lot more practical. Why doesn't Uncle Sam do a deal with Uncle Bill? Uncle Bill Gates, that is.
EVERYBODY WINS. What I mean is this: The last thing we all knew, Bill's company, Microsoft, was being set up for dismemberment by Sam's antitrust cops. Part of the problem, the trustbusters said, was that Bill had too much power over PC makers. Now what if, instead of spending years to fight it all out in appeals court, Sam simply asks Bill to use his billions and his influence with the likes of Dell and Compaq to come up with PCs for every polling booth? What if we had, courtesy of Uncle Bill, a nation of wired voters, from Nome to Key West? Presto! No more chads, and the PC makers get their own much-needed jolt on the revenue line.
That would leave Microsoft as powerful as ever, of course. But there's a recent precedent for just this sort of legal settlement. Tobacco companies today are falling all over themselves for the commonweal, advertising here, there, and everywhere about what a great job they're doing keeping (American) teens from buying cancer sticks. Media companies like that deal because they get more ad revenues, all those state attorneys general get to preen, and, last I looked, Philip Morris shareholders keep getting higher and higher dividends.
While Uncle Sam is at it, he might also want to cut Ford and Firestone in on the action. They could escape some of their own woes in Washington by pledging Election Day transportation to help get the vote out. This might also be the perfect moment to ask America Online and Time Warner to chip in, too. The soon-to-merge couple, awaiting Uncle Sam's blessing, might find it wise to supply the telecom and cable networks that our country of cybervoters will demand if we hope to avoid another West Palm Beach.
Who could such a deal hurt? Maybe one or two particularly odious lawyers and the odd precinct captain in South Brooklyn. But for all of us down here in Florida, I say go for it, Sam. We wanna get back to the beach already.
Barker covers personal finance for Business Week from Melbourne Beach Edited by Beth Belton
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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