Poor Lincoln Chafee — more than a year after his failed bid for the White House, the Republican-turned-Independent-turned-Democrat from the small state of Rhode Island can’t figure out why he failed to gain traction.
In an interview with Esquire magazine on October 12th, the former governor finally admitted that his biggest political setback was when he pushed for the metric system.
“I guess the big mistake — I went back and forth on including the metric system angle,” Chafee said. “I was just crossing my fingers there would be some intellectual approach to the various proposals I put out in my announcement speech, which kind of covered the gamut, from ending capital punishment, to bringing Edward Snowden home.”
He continued, “Unfortunately, my crossed fingers didn’t work, and it just turned into more of a joke about metric, not ‘let’s look at the bigger picture.”
At the time of Chafee’s announcement, he was polling dead last at about one percent, and his list of policy positions were all very generic. Chafee was more left-wing than Hillary Clinton and more right-wing than Bernie Sanders, but the only thing truly different was the metric system stance.
“My wife said, ‘no, it will be misunderstood.’ And she was right,” Chafee admitted.
Bless your heart Chafee, but the fact that you didn’t stand out is no coincidence, you were an accidental senator who inherited his father’s seat when he died suddenly and won on a sympathy vote. After being ousted after one term, he became an Independent and barely won a single term in that office before his unpopularity soared.
By the time he ran for president, he was so unpopular in his home state he couldn’t even be elected dog catcher.
