COLUMN: Politics: Not just for breakfast

From Tom Nessinger's "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96 From Tom Nessinger's "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96 As I write this, it's about a week until the election. As you read it, it's the morning after the expected carnage. From my pre-election vantage point, the only thing that conceivably could have prevented a Clinton landslide was if the president had taken Hillary, Chelsea and Socks hostage and held them at gunpoint in the Lincoln Bedroom until his demands -- a C-130 filled with Quarter Pounders and safe passage to the Playboy Mansion -- were met. Which is about as likely to happen as Bob Dole dancing the Macarena on an episode of NYPD Blue. NBC's Don Ohlmeyer promised to call the Presidential election by 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on election night, which is 5 p.m.on the West Coast, when most people are just getting ready to go to the polls -- which they won't do because they'll have been told it's all over. Small wonder people are cynical about politics and elections. Everyone has an opinion about why we've become cynical about politics over the last several years. Me, I trace it to childhood. Specifically, I trace it to an event that was my generation's first real exposure to democracy. The year was 1968. It was a Summer of, if not Love, at least being Really Good Friends. While the tear gas outside the Democratic Convention cast a foul odor over the elections to come, the youth of America banded together with one voice and cast a decisive vote: Let the silly rabbit eat Trix. See, since 1960 General Mills had shamelessly discriminated against its spokesrodent, the Trix rabbit, by denying him those delectable fluorescent-dyed balls o' goodness. The cry of "Silly rabbit! Trix are for kids!" was heard across the land until, in 1968, ballots started appearing on the back of boxes of Trix. Even I, a dumb eight-year-old in Chicago, could mail in my ballot and vote on whether the rabbit could eat Trix. And, amazingly, in 1968 the softer-hearted among us prevailed, allowing the rabbit his first taste of the fruit of the forbidden cereal box. Unfortunately, these little snippets of kid-democracy were unpredictable. General Mills didn't hold another Rabbit Referendum until 1980, when again old long-ears won the right to bite. Ditto 1984. In 1992, however, according to a General Mills press release, "The new president of kids everywhere vote[d] that this time, 'Trix [were] only for kids and not for silly rabbits.' " This is a disturbing trend for a couple of reasons. First, it marked the end of direct voting. Apparently there was no yes/no vote on the rabbit issue in '92; kids first had to vote for an unidentified "president of kids everywhere" (who was this person? Clinton? Saddam Hussein? The pink Power Ranger?) who then decided whether to feed the bunny. Was this part of his or her platform? Were debates held on the rabbit-nutrition issue? Worse, in 1996 there wasn't even an election. Instead, General Mills ran a sort of glorified poll by taking the rabbit on the road to make his case directly to the tots -- but only in certain cities! Moreover, of the eight cities the rabbit and his entourage visited, six (Louisville, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Chicago) were in the Midwest, and only two (New York and Baltimore) were on the East Coast. If you were a rug-rat and lived anywhere else, including Philadelphia, you were just SOL. This is enough to turn even the most innocent, puppy-eyed youth into a junior Evans and/or Novak. What's even more puzzling, though, is the correspondence of presidential election-winners and rabbit cereal-intake. Think about it: In 1968, 1980 and 1984, Republicans took the White House and Bunny went a-snacking. In 1992, on the other hand, a Democrat won the election and our floppy-eared friend got bupkiss. You'd think giving out food to indigent rabbits would be a form of welfare, despised by Republicans. But you also have to figure it's private charity. Wasn't it Bush who kept insisting private companies should take up the slack instead of having woodland creatures on the (excuse the expression) dole? Framed thus, General Mills qualifies as a Point of Light, Lagomorph Division. But as you learn in graduate school, small samples have little predictive power. It's hard to draw a trend from five "elections." In fact, the kids in this year's poll have overwhelmingly voted the rabbit another heapin' helpin' of Trix, and like the grownups have expressed a preference for Clinton over Dole, 40 percent to 25 percent. It's possible to read too much into these results, though. The kids also voted for a weekly allowance over $10. They probably figured Dole looks like the cranky old guy who'd make you clean his garage and then give you two bucks and a box of Good n' Plenty, and voted their pocketbooks.