I was going to Run For President….

But I decided not to.

Yes indeed, me the little old Blog Columnist, was going to run for nation’s highest public office. But, I thought better of it. Too many nasty things I just wouldn’t like, like private security companies and detectives checking me out, all the way back to kindergarten, and trying to trip me up with word-weasels. Be that as it may, I know what you’re all thinking: ” Well Bruce, What would have been your platform?” Well folks, my platform would have been very simple: I would have run on a platform of giving Americans all the things they care about the most, the things that Americans want more than anything else. And what things are those? Could it be a good public school system? Nah, couldn’t be that. Most American parents are too wrapped up in their high-pressure yuppie careers, and are just glad to have someplace to dump the little dears for a few hours per day. Ahh, Health care! Surely, that’s on the minds of all Americans, right? Hmm, I’m afraid not. Most American men just want a prescription for Viagra, if TV ads are to be believed, and American women seem to just want something for their terrible, terrible depression, anxiety, and hot flashes. Again, TV ads tell me that all women suffer from this. Personally, I find that a pizza from my favorite italian place works just fine when I’ve got the blues. Ladies, please, try some Double Chocolates from your local Dunkin Donuts. No prescription needed.

Ahh, jobs and the economy! That must be it! Americans are concerned about jobs, right? Boy, I don’t know about that one. I keep hearing two schools of thought on this. One is that there are lot of people out of work, hurting badly. The other is that we are in the middle of a huge economic boom, and thousands of jobs are being created. Well, I guess all those laid off software engineers and former high tech hot shots are perfectly happy with their new jobs at the big box stores, now that their former careers got outsourced to India. After reading that report in the Boston Globe, which stated that there are people living on Beacon Hill who have a hundred and sixty grand to spend on a “condominium parking space” for their hundred thousand dollar SUV’s I’m hard pressed to believe there is anything wrong with economy at all. Heck, we’ve all got cash just lying around to spend on a parking space for the Mercedes, BMW, or SUV, right? So it would seem. So no, there’s nothing wrong with economy, nothing at all. (Side note: Did anyone hear anything about the present administration’s efforts to get fast food jobs listed as “manufacturing jobs”? The logic being that doing such tasks as assembling hamburgers and orders of fries is, essentially, “manufacturing”. This is a rumor I heard, so if anyone has anything real on it, send it along, thanks.)

So, what do Americans care about? I think I’ve got it all figured out. It’s gasoline. Yep, I can think of nothing more important to Americans than gasoline. So, I was going to promise all the gasoline Americans could possibly burn, at no more than fifty cents per gallon. How do you all like that? Pretty good, yes? And speed limits? No problem, there won’t be any. Ask any white male American, he’ll tell you all about his great driving skill. The wastebag in the the Jeep Cherokee I saw this afternoon would probably the perfect person to ask about his driving skill. (Come to think of it, most white females will also tell you about their driving skill, and exactly what’s wrong with yours. And they’ll do it with lovely purple faces, and screaming voices which would drown out an F-16.) So, no need for speed limits, right? I was going to promise parking spaces for everyone, and I mean everyone! We’ll just bulldoze and pave over all that silly conservation land you see everyplace, and viola! Parking spaces to the horizon. Americans love parking spaces. They must, since they get into fist fights over them. Heck, sometimes the fights involve creative weapons of various kinds, including brooms and certain types of sporting goods. (I hear it on my police scanner folks. Get one from Bearcat and see for yourselves.) As for what Americans can drive, bigger is always better, right? You think those Hummers are big and bad enough? C’mon, this is America Damn it! We can do better than that. Surely, our engineers can modify armored personnel carriers for use by soccer moms and yuppie dads. What do ya think kids? Wouldn’t it be cool to be driven up to school in a nasty looking military APC? You betcha! Mom, you’d be so safe in one of these. And dad, think of the respect you’d get at intersections. Yeah, just let that wuss in the Ford F-250 try something, you’ll show him who’s tough, right? I can see them now, parked in the huge driveways of tony suburbs. How about a Bill Blass special edition, or a special package from Eddie Bauer?

There were to have been plenty of other planks on my presidential platform: To manage our national park system, I had planned to privatize the entire park system, and give it all to Walmart to manage. C’mon, you all know this is what everyone wants. No more soft-spoken, intelligent rangers in funny hats. No, the person now greeting you at any national park would be a blue-smocked “greeter”. The people giving the interpretative tours would “need to check with a supervisor” before starting any tour, but it’s OK, right? (Oh, sorry but no person wearing any type of union t-shirt or jacket would be admitted to any national park without a full-time security escort. Any such person would not be permitted to speak to any Wal,,, er, National Park employee.) I was going to make Beer the national beverage. Every American male would have received two gifts from my administration on his twenty first birthday: A wall sized, flat panel TV, and a six pack. I don’t understand the logic myself, but it somehow makes sense if you stand back and think about it. (If that bit about no speed limits didn’t cement the white male vote for me, then this should do it.) Married women constantly complain that this is all their husbands seem to want to do on the weekends, watch their huge TV’s and drink beer. I say, let’s get them started on this as soon as possible. And ladies, for your twenty first, the biggest chocolate sundae you’ve ever seen, and a date with George Clooney. If George were not available, a look-a-like would have been substituted. That’s ok, right? You don’t really care about anything else, right? C’mon ladies, it’s George!

I was going to make Quentin Tarantino the Secretary of State. I like his movies, so I figured why the heck not? For Secretary of Defense, I had Rosie O’Donnell in mind. Heh-Heh. One false move from North Korea or anyone else, and I would have sent in Rosie! See how fast they want to negotiate, or just plain surrender. I can hear Kim Jong Il now pleading “Please President Black, show mercy!
We’ll give up communism! We’ll open our borders! We’ll give back the Pueblo! We’ll do anything you want, just make her shut up!”

Man, oh man, I would have had such a huge list of things to do, if I had gone ahead and run for president. I would have had to put Bill Gates and Ken Lay in charge of the justice department. Obviously, they know a lot more about running it than the people who are running it now, right? ‘Nuff said. For my Secretary of Homeland Security, I think Vince McMahon would have been a good fit. Can you just see those terrorists getting the snot kicked out of them by some of those women from the WWF? Uh, now what happens to a terrorist male when a woman beats him up? I don’t know, but I’m betting it’s not good. And Vince could have put the male wrestlers in charge of security at inner city schools. Now, there’s some authority the kids will respect.

Boy, so many things to do when you run for President. But I decided not to. So sorry folks. Looks like the choice this time around will be a well-connected, arrogant, corporate puppet from one party, or a well-connected, arrogant, corporate puppet from the other party. Cheers.