AN IMPORTANT POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT: After long and mostly pointless consultations with my friends, family, and political advisors, all of whom thought that the following was a monumentally silly idea not worthy of my time and effort, but not as silly as their constantly asking me for money, which I think is pretty silly but they don’t seem to have a problem with, I have decided to announce my candidacy for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Presidency of this our Great Republic. It seems to be the thing to do these days, sort of like owning a Pet Rock or a lime-green leisure suit was in the 1970’s, and for once in my life I want to be on the forefront of a movement instead firmly imbedded in that movement’s rear, which is what usually happens to me. I was probably the last person in the United States to actually buy a combination AM/FM radio and eight track deck; no one bothered to tell me that this technology was about to go the way of the wax cylinder, the trebuchet, and the stereopticon, and I got stuck with a machine that I couldn’t get Jethro Tull eight tracks for anymore. The AM/FM radio worked fine, though, but I could’ve gotten one of those for a lot less than it cost me to get the eight-track deck as well. So I want to skip repeating that experience, if at all possible. But I do want to say that of all the Democratic candidates, I am the one with the least experience in government, although this does not seem to be a handicap this year, and that my lack of experience is due, for the most part, to the fact that I have not been running for President for most of my adult life, unlike some candidates I could mention.

My family, friends, and political advisors, and I should point out that there is a considerable overlap between these three groups, all point out that even the least prepared of this year’s candidates all have political war chests amounting, in some cases, in the tens of millions of dollars, whereas I, on the other hand, have some $15.63 left over from last week’s pay check, a sum that would more or less limit my political advertising to spray painting my name on buildings, cars, and unsuspecting passersby as they wander down Main Street looking for the crack dealers. If I practice the most stringent of economies in my campaign spending, I am sure I will be able to afford a magic marker as well. How then, everyone insists on telling me, can I even hope to compete against this year’s crop of Democratic candidates?

There is even, for those who want to hold this against me, the reality that I have been a Democrat In Name Only for some time now, a person who disagrees with nearly everything the Democratic Party now stands for, and who would be a registered Republican if only I were not too lazy to fill out the party registration form. Why would I, in the face of these insurmountable odds, even bother wasting my time in running for President? Here, however, is the beauty of my candidacy: I am not running for the nomination of my nominal party in 2008; this would be, just as every one tells me, a waste of my valuable time and scant funds. No, I am running for the Democratic nomination in 2060.

There are clear advantages to my making this run at this, and that, time. First, at the moment I am the only candidate in the field, all of the other candidates being either in utero or in elementary school at the moment, which means that the big Democratic money men will have to come to me if they want to hang on to whatever it is the big Democratic money men want out of a Democratic President. The teachers’ unions, for example, will have to deal with me and no one else; all of the other candidates in the race hate their teachers with near pathological ferocity, despise having to sit in class all day long, and want to go to the playground now before it gets late and their mothers call them into the house. This attitude, and I am certain that most of the other candidates share it at this point, does not bode well for a group dependent on keeping the kids in a stuffy classroom against their will, and I am already calling for a special prosecutor to investigate charges, which I hope are untrue, that the National Education Association has already tried to influence my future opponents with a semester’s worth of small boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal and pint-sized cartons of chocolate milk, with a guaranteed B+ in arithmetic thrown in to sweeten the deal.

Second, with inflation the $15.63 that I have to make the run today will be worth several billion dollars in 2060, which ought to be more than enough to make this run easily and defeat all the other candidates, who, I should point out, are only a few years removed from soiling themselves on a regular basis, dribbling spittle all over themselves in public, and in general behaving in a manner that would denigrate the office of the Presidency, not that I want to start using attack ads and spreading negative information about any of my honorable opponents, at least not now; it might damage their self-esteem and their ability to play well with others.

Now, before you start telling me, I already know the disadvantages of this run, the first being that in 2060 I will be 102 years old. This is very true, I would be the oldest person ever to seek the nomination, and frankly, there is no guarantee that I will even live to 102, but if my country needs me, and it clearly does, I will do my best to hang on. Further, I will venture a guess and say that by the time I make this run, the country will be so sick of baby boom presidents that I may not get the nomination. This is always a possibility. Dealing with baby boom burnout is a major problem, even for those of us stuck at the ass end of this annoying demographic cohort, and I can only say that, if I win, I intend to save some money on the care of my fellow baby boomers by sending them all to Canada with free bus passes to get their meds and then not letting them back across the border. I think we’ll just turn off the lights and say that we’ve moved the United States to the South Pacific or to the Bahamas or some other place with great weather all year round. The Canadians will object to our dumping millions of seniors on their side of the 49th parallel, especially millions of baby boom seniors, of course, but objecting to Americans on a regular basis is at the very heart of Canadian nationalism, and far be it for me, or any American, for that matter, to place restrictions on any Canadian patriot’s ability to fly the Maple Leaf flag proudly. Oh Canada, we stand on guard for thee, as any loyal Canadian will tell you, and while they’re standing on guard for Canada they can keep an eye on the old folks from home. Better yet, they can keep the old folks from coming home; we’re tired of paying for this generation of egomaniacs. I also intend to save money on foreign travel; there won’t be any, not unless they’ve perfected the transporter beam by 2060. A centenarian President needs his sleep, after all, so I won’t be going anywhere. If foreign leaders feel the need to come here, then fine, let them come over the Rio Grande along with everyone else and we’ll put them up at the Holiday Inn. I’d offer to let them stay the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, but I’m pretty sure the Clintons will still be barricaded in there and resisting any and all attempts to remove them by the time I get to the White House.