I can’t really get behind any one of the three candidates that still have their hat in the ring as that fateful day in November draws closer. I do know one thing, I am tired of the campaign already and the television ads haven’t even begun to drench the airwaves. By the end of October, I figure I will need serious therapy. (I probably already need serious therapy, but that is neither here nor there.)

Maybe if Clinton, McCain and Obama would team up and just run the country together, we just might have something. It could be the new millennium’s version of the “Mod Squad.”

I don’t want four (or eight) more years of the Bush-Clinton dance we have been doing for the past 20 years. It just seems to remind me of the New York Yankees-Brooklyn Dodgers always playing in the World Series during the late 1940s and early 1950s. I wasn’t alive then, but I think if I were, I would have probably become angry and frustrated.

Obama talks a good game about how the nation needs change. That all sounds well and good, but I think that if he does get the presidency, his big ideas would eventually find their way to the bureaucratic cesspool that most big ideas end up finding the way too.

And I won’t be able to support McCain, because he foresees the United States occupying Iraq for the next 20 years. I guess I’m still a little sketchy on why we are in Iraq in the first place. I am aware that the company line is that we have to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here. But if my memory serves me correctly, 16 of the 20 terrorists who were involved in the planning and execution of the Sept. 11, 2001 , attacks were from Saudi Arabia , not Iraq . I think the real reason that we invaded Iraq is because George W. Bush just doesn’t like country with a q in its name. So it’s probably a good thing that Quebec never split from Canada during W’s eight years, or there would have been trouble.

Actually, in the none of the above program, a different citizen would be chosen to be president for every day of the four year term by way of a lottery system. It would be like getting picked for jury duty. It would be your civic duty to be president for a day. And being president for a day would pay more than jury duty. I figure that anyone who is president for a day should get the president’s one-day before taxes pay of $1,096 That’s nothing to sneeze at.

The president for a day program would be much like how the Chicago Cubs have had a different celebrity sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch of their home games since Harry Caray died in 1998. Sometimes the celebrities do a very good job, and other times they are el stinko. That is just the chance you take, because nothing in life is certain.

The problem that I have with the whole electoral process is that we get no real choice. I say make the election completely open. No primaries, no party affiliations, none of that crap. Our government has broken up Standard Oil, Ma Bell, etc… because it was deemed unfair not to give people a choice. However, when it comes to politics you can pick either candidate A or candidate B or waste your vote on candidate C, D, E or F. We need a better system.

If I got the chance to vote for an ideal candidate for president, I think I would want to vote for Bill Gates. I figure the guy is smart and he knows how to make money. And with the national debt skyrocketing through the trillions, I think we need a president with a little business savvy. Granted, he may be a little boring, but Calvin Coolidge was president and he was as exciting as a lamp shade.

Another dream candidate I would have to pledge my support to is comedian Lewis Black, just because he hates everything. I like that.

Other people out there mention how they would vote for Oprah Winfrey for president, but those are the same people who are getting brainwashed by the Oprah “read what I tell you to read” freight train that has been barreling through our culture for the past 10 to 15 years.

For those of you who may have been taken in by this pseudo cult, let me remind you, the “almighty Oprah” doesn’t have all the answers. She is out to make a buck, just like everybody else.

However, I probably will end up making a write-in vote for former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer when Nov. 4 comes. I figure if he would be elected president, at least it would be one heck of an inaugural ball.

The author is the sports editor for the Clarion News.