I found my new favorite 2016 presidential candidate yesterday.

Did you see former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee officially announce that he was running for the Democratic nomination? It was goofy and unpolished. Chafee looks like a cross between Steve Doocy, Stellan Skarsgard and Ed Begley, Jr. And as forced and awkward as his “I’m-physically-pointing-the-way-to-the-future” gesticulations were, I found myself smitten!

I’m sure I will end up voting for Hillary Clinton against whatever Bush or Tea Party crazy person the Republicans choose when push comes to shove. But I am sad about how sure I am. I don’t like the idea of anointment in these matters, nor am I comfortable with the swing towards political dynasty that Hillary represents.



I’m here for Chafee’s attack on Hillary’s hawkish history; I’m hippie enough to get behind a silly slogan like “Waging Peace” (“Visualize whirled peas!”) and hip-hop enough to dig on some “Fresh Ideas for America.” But mostly, I think, it was his suggestion that the United States adopt the metric system that swung me aboard the Chafee-in-’16 Express.

United States customary units are stupid. We should have gotten rid of them back in the late 1800s, when US Coast and Geodetic Survey superintendent Thomas Corwin Mendenhall led a brave but ultimately futile campaign to free our country from the tyranny of English imperial units. In 1893, The Mendenhall Order wanted to make the international meter and kilogram the fundamental standards of length and mass in the US, but it backed off from legislating the official change into customary practice.



There were pushes in the 20th century to amend our stubborn ways, too.

President Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975, saying: “I sign the bill with the conviction that it will enable our country to adopt increasing use of this convenient measurement language – both at home in our schools and factories and overseas with our trading partners.”

But again (like most things Ford did) the effort fell on its face, because the Act didn’t mandate the switch. “It is important to stress that the conversion contemplated in this legislation is to be a completely voluntary one”, he said, vastly overestimating American gumption.

Chafee is just kind of leader we need to put some teeth behind the rhetoric. It’s time for Americans to accept the internationally accepted system once and for all – on paper and in practice. Down with United States customary units! You can hear the Citifield crowd chanting from Queens as the 129.274-kilogram hero Bartolo Colon leads an upstart bunch of scrappy youngsters through their most exciting season in years. “Let’s … Go … Metric!”

The metric system is better because it’s clearer, and it makes math easier. It is based on the decimal system, which correlates to the number of fingers and toes on most human hands and feet. We have an innate sense for counting things in sets of 10. Our current system, meanwhile, is a hodge-podge of weird, difficult numbers like 12s, 4s, 16s and 33s, based on the arbitrary size of some Roman soldier’s sandal.

Have you ever driven a car in Boston? It’s basically impossible. This is because, as legend has it, the street map there was designed by cows instead of human beings. Go to Boston and just try not to get lost. If you’re not a cow, I bet you fail.

Compare this winding mess to the tidy, sensible, negotiable grid that people with smart-sounding names like Gouverneur Morris, John Rutherford and Simeon DeWitt laid out for New York City and the analogy becomes clear. Inches, feet, yards? Ounces, pints, quarts, gallons? These are Boston cow paths of measurement!

As Chafee pointed out, the United States is one of three countries in the entire world to eschew the metric system. The others? Liberia and Myanmar.

I support the new candidate’s efforts toward internationalism. I do think it’s symbolic of a better, healthier diplomatic stance and that American exceptionalism is a poisonous idea. It’s time we stop being a rogue nation in this regard. Let’s join the global family.



Chafee for president! If only for the easier math.