ISO: POTUS

I've had the plague for the past couple of days (on the mend now), so I've had some time with the NyQuil bottle to contemplate the Big Picture. I realized that while I could tell you how a candidate's sympathetic nervous system is responding on the podium (assuming they're all mammals), I don't really know that much about the 2008 presidential election. I was too embarrassed to admit to my parents that I watched the caucus results on the local evening news. Then my dad came up with some gossip about John Edwards and a $400 haircut. Further embarrassment when I had no knowledge of it and no retort.

Grassroots politics died for me the day Howard Dean made that weird noise, but I think -- after four years -- that I'm ready to see other candidates. Given my relative success with online dating in the past, I submit to you a list of what I'm looking for. In no particular order:

1. Speak. It's not right that I have to change radio stations when All Things Considered plays a clip of the leader of our country speaking. I really don't think I've made it through a full clip in seven or so years ... I just wait to read it in print and the pain is a little easier to bear.

2. Read. Books. With chapters. Bookstores are piled high with delicious texts -- history, economics, foreign policy, sociology -- these might come in handy when running the world. I'm jealous. Read the books that I can't because I just started the page-turner Lippincott's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

3. Iraq. Fix it. I don't know how, but do it. I'm sure there are a lot of smart people out there who have spent their whole careers thinking about the Middle East. Type "civil war" and "Iraq" into Google Scholar and see who pops up. Invite them over for coffee. They might even have written a book (see #2.)

3a. The War on Terror. Enough already. It's 2008 and we're debating whether or not "simulating the experience of drowning" constitutes torture. We're combing Central Asia for some guy in renal failure. I'm more tired of it than the folks making infographics over it CNN. My children are going to ask me about it, like I asked my parents about Viet Nam or McCarthy, and I'm not going to have a good explanation.

4. The Planet. Start fixing it, too. There is so much to do, I'll just give you the basics. Oil. Sucks. Stop killing people for it, stop running things with it, stop making things out of it. Got it? Ratify the Kyoto Protocol already, and I mean this one, not the second one they come up with in 2012. (Hey, another guy you may want to have coffee with. You may just hit it off, but don't ask him about the recount.)

5. Health Care. Um, fix it. I subscribe to the radical notion that all human beings deserve access to medicine. You should too.

6. Sex. Just a few items here, but generally none of your business. You hopefully consider most of this topic to be part of #5 and not #7. We can have it with whomever we want, we should have the opportunity to learn how to protect ourselves against diseases and unintended pregnancies, and we should fund all of the same overseas.

7. Religion. Generally none of your business, and evolution happened.

Extra Credit
A. War on Drugs - Pointless. Racist.
B. Race - Still matters.
C. Guns - You may own one (1) if, for some reason, you are dependent on game as your sole source of protein.
D. Bike - Ride one. Cool.

That's about it. Time to put down the green syrup, turn on the NPR and wade through a year's worth of sound bites. But maybe I'll watch "Obama Girl" one more time. (Obama vs. Giuliani is actually my favorite.)

P.S. - I really hope that I get put back on some watch list when I hit "Publish" because I've been missing that personal touch at airport security.