Mr. Good-for-Nothing wins the day. Hip. Hip. Hooey

Once upon a time in the mythical land of El Lay, there were two men running for Chief Moolah who were working very hard to convince the people that if elected they would do nothing.

This may seem strange at first glance, but it was during a time when political scientists studying El Lay’s election process had determined that the people were always voting for the lesser of two evils.

The candidates were incumbent Little Jimmy Hah and Tough Tony Villa, both of whom were being investigated at the time for allegedly evil deeds, such as cheating, lying and receiving money they weren’t supposed to be getting.

In the final debate before the election, they pointed their fingers at each other with such ferocity that both men ended up with an occupational ailment that came to be known as digital politico paralysis. The index fingers of their right hands were frozen into a pointed position and would remain that way throughout the campaign.

They accused each other of pretty much the same things and didn’t spend a lot of time spelling out the details of what they wanted to do for El Lay, which pretty much indicated that they had no real plans.

The people at first resented the notion that nothing was going to be done no matter who was elected, but then surveys revealed that as Election Day approached, they were beginning to think that if the winner did nothing, at least he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. That made the candidates pretty equal in the eyes of the voters.

On the one hand, Little Jimmy Hah, the incumbent, had spent four years in office proving beyond a doubt that he could occupy the chair of Chief Moolah and do nothing, while Tough Tony had demonstrated in a variety of political positions that he could also do nothing when it was required.

Due to his years of demonstrated nothingness, Hah had visibility on his side, but Villa was winning endorsements by several individuals and organizations with histories of doing nothing in a big way. That was impressive.

So what it was coming down to, according to political pundits, was the nature of the investigations that were in progress. Both men were accused specifically of illegal methods of raising money, which was kind of a ho-hum issue as far as the voters were concerned. However, it did seem to them that Villa had raised a lot less money than Hah, which would make him, in effect, the lesser of two evils.

Also, it was noted, Villa was not as tall as Hah, which also made him the shorter of two evils. Experts from the University of El Lay were called in to evaluate the pluses and minuses of the candidates. The same expert who had become famous for being the first to notice prosecutor Marcia Quirk’s new hairdo in the K.O. Simpleton murder trial decided that Villa’s plus was that he was the better-dressed of the two. The incumbent, the expert concluded, was too rumpled to be effective, while Villa was neatly buttoned down during all of his campaign appearances. There were rumors that he also wore dark, two-piece pajamas to bed.

Informed of the expert’s evaluation, Hah was heard to suggest that the suits were gifts from questionable donors from the nearby land of Graften, which seemed to be the source of many political gifts. Villa scoffed at the accusation and said his wife had made the slick, Italian-style suits from used clothing purchased at a fund-raising auction for the politically bewildered.

The last hours of the campaign were spent in bitter accusations, with Hah’s heavily bandaged right index finger jabbing the air with such ferocity that it created a buzz. Someone noticed that Villa’s unbandaged index finger seemed somehow larger than it had been, which raised rumors of steroid usage and Villa’s possible association with sports chemists and oversized baseball players.

Villa dismissed the accusations by saying he had been exercising the finger by pointing it at his wife, his children and his dog to strengthen it for the ordeal ahead. He also admitted to having hired a finger coach and to receiving shots to increase his finger’s flexibility.

But those were minor details to the voters. What they really wanted to know was who would do the least during the next four years. Villa claimed to have proof of Hah having completed at least two somethings while in office, but Villa’s evidence seemed so slim that the voters generally disregarded it. Even the expert from the University of El Lay could find no particular something that Hah had accomplished.

A last-minute move to abolish the job of Chief Moolah as largely ceremonial and generally useless failed to win support because the people knew that, whichever man was elected, he would probably carry out his promise to do nothing, or very close to nothing, because that was the nature of the position.

The shorter of two evils won in a landslide and did nothing with such style that he was reelected four years later. And nothing ever changed in El Lay.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.