No matter.  Detailed below are my best guesses as to who will next occupy the White House come January 2009, but only, of course, after Americans have first dutifully engaged in a tradition now rendered quaint (like some Geneva Conventions): “voting,” a feel-good process consisting of utilizing inactive screens on electronic boxes that has no actual bearing on who is eventually declared president or king or whatever it’s called by then.

The astute observer will notice my leading picks are all members of the Bush family:

The twins: Having both Jenna and Barbara Bush as co-presidents is actually a stroke of genius.  (This is likely the only time, by the way, that both “genius” and “Bush” will ever inhabit the same sentence, so capture it in your mind’s eye.)  Because the odds are high against both being in rehab or jail at the same time, one of them is bound to be available for, like, ceremonies and stuff while the other is busy drying/bailing out.  While it’s true that having two twenty-something Americans serving as co-commanderettes-in-chief is illegal on at least a couple of different levels, anyone who has paid attention to how their father ruins, er, runs, the country knows he’s never let little things like legalities get in the way.

Besides, who couldn’t look forward to a giggling Inauguration Day speech full of lame hamster jokes and festivities afterwards sure to include fake ID parties and all night keggers?

Laura: I think it’s interesting how certain factions could excoriate John Kerry last year for killing an enemy solider during wartime, yet any discussion of a 17-year-old Laura Welch (the future Mrs. Dubya) blowing a stop sign one clear night on a Texas country road and snuffing out the life of an innocent classmate driving the car she broadsided is somehow off-limits.

Ah, those hypocritical Republicans: gotta revile ‘em.  Had a young Teresa Heinz Kerry knocked off a fellow teen in a tragic lawn bowling accident, you can bet Karl Rove would have played it to the dirty hilt.  The whole world knows Rove would sell his own mother out for political gain -- if he had one, that is (fungi don’t really have parents).

Subhuman ad hominem homily: Is it just me, or does Laura look, well, slightly reptilian?  I don’t think it’s so much her third eyelids or the scales covering her entire body (a good make-up man is worth his weight in gold), but you know how when during the Barbara Walters interview in January Laura suddenly shot out that two-foot long forked tongue and slurped up a fly in mid-air like it was nobody’s business?  That right there was what got me to questioning her exact species.  I figured Walters would at least ask her about it, but Babwa herself was busy right then biting off the head of a small rodent.  That was one weird interview.

‘Course, my recollection could be off a bit.

What does any of this have to do with anyone becoming president?  Not a damn thing.  But since the ballots we all cast last November had the same relevance, I guess it’s a draw.

Neil: Don’t laugh.  People chuckled at the thought of Dubya being elected president, too, and even though he never has been, we all daily feel the brunt of that sick joke.

The common wisdom is that Neil’s possible political career was shot down before it began just because he was a central player in a $1.3 billion savings and loan scandal in the late 80s.  (To prove it wasn’t a fluke, he became integrally involved a short while later with a company [Apex Energy] that also tanked after he invested only three grand of his own dough against a Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan of $2 million.)

I say folks have Neil all wrong: what better experience could you want in a thief executive than bilking American taxpayers out of Big Money?  Compared to sibling George, though, Neil’s just getting his feet wet and fingers sticky, and probably could still benefit from participating in another major con job or two of ripping off federal funds before becoming qualified enough to follow in his brother’s goose steps.

Finally, with Neil as Current Unquestioned Ruler, or CUR (“president” just seems so, well, passé -- sorta like our democracy), just think how much fun it would be concocting silly phrases like “Heil, Neil!” or “Kneel, knave, it’s Neil.”

On second thought, perhaps not so much.

Rose: Third on the left as you enter the White House Rose Garden, many observers have noted this plant possesses a quiet yet resolute calmness during all matters, no matter how thorny.  It is this steadfast demeanor, many believe, that gives it an inside edge among all 2008 botanical presidential candidates, because, as has been noted many times, “People want a president who isn’t wishy-washy.”  (Although, technically, in this case, it would be “a president that isn’t wishy-washy,” ‘cause a shrub isn’t a “who,” it’s an “it”; you know, like Dubya.)

Another plus: Extensive testing has shown this bush registers an I.Q. exactly equivalent to that held by our indumbent.  (Disclaimer: A high source -- check that, a highly placed source -- tells me the numbers were fudged a bit to reduce the plant’s final score to preclude undue embarrassment for its gray and green coloring matter-deficient kin.  Rumor also says GOP operatives have promised the bush unlimited mulch and soothing monthly de-aphiding baths [March through September only] as long as it keeps mum, even though it hasn’t any mums, only roses.)

Prescott: Some are bound to quibble with appointing a deceased person as president, undoubtedly citing things like constitutional restrictions and a sure unyielding stench emanating from the Oval Office, but I daresay such pifflings thus far have not impeded Prescott’s granddemon, er, grandson, from doing his job of doing a job on America.

Daddy Bush’s daddy obviously possessed a pair of grosse Hoden (and I don’t mean that in a good way).  The term’s Spanish equivalent, cajones grandes, may be more familiar to most folks, but the Germanic verbiage is quite appropriate given certain business dealings the former U.S. senator from Connecticut (1952-63) conducted during World War II.

Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell of The Guardian write in September 2004:

“…[recently declassified] documents…show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, [Prescott Bush] worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power.  It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty” and

“…the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade…Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.”

Just what is it about these Skull and Bones guys, anyway, (yes, Prescott was one) that is just so, well, creepy?  What depraved, can-never-see-the-light-of-day acts do the super duper secret society members commit as pledges, of which incriminating photos must surely exist, that they will do anything, including destroy America or even refuse to properly speak English, before breaking the dark bonds of their mysterious order?

Plunder graves?  Fornicate in a most despicable manner?  Dance the Macarena?  (Regarding this last item, the most vile of the three, by far: Anyone who’s seen photos taken at a wedding reception a few years back of a certain individual seemingly merrily engaging in this cultural abomination, that is not me, OK?  And I do so know my left hip from my right, thank you very much.)

It’s obvious that America’s current surplus Bush crop comes by its duplicity quite naturally. It’s all in the genes, which certainly is the most convincing argument I can think of for banning both cloning and genetically modified fools.

Barbara: Despite her discombobulating ultra-white hair (reminiscent of the terrifying mythological creatures, las monstruas del pelo blanco, particularly feared for their dreadful penchant for bearing evil, muddleheaded spawn), how can a woman who otherwise looks so motherly saddle the world with offspring like George, Jeb, Neil, Marvin, Dorothy, and Toto, too?  This sad record of production is almost as abysmal as that of my beloved/hated San Francisco Giants’ grand total of world championships (zero) since I’ve been alive.

Almost.

Yet, according to Al Franken in his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, ol’ Barb is plenty protective of her purloining progeny for whom probity is a proven problem.  He relates how he and Barbara crossed swords shortly after crossing paths, leaving her, um, kinda cross.

Sharing the same first class section with the third-class former first lady during a flight in January 2000, Franken, naively thinking Barbara was human, made a couple of innocuous jokes about Dubya, one of them implying he wouldn’t be president-elect come November.  (Franken was under the same naïve impression then as most of us: that elections actually were.)  She was not pleased, however, and by the end of the journey had haughtily dismissed Franken by decreeing no fewer than six times, “I’m through with you,” but not before also telling him she has five children and is “proud of every one of them.”

Now, unless Barbara has a super-secret stash of five other kids somewhere (is she in Skull and Bones, too?), we know exactly of whom she speaks.  And she’s proud of them?  Anyway, Franken recounts that when he later was at a Bat Mitzvah attended by “Washington insiders, Democrats and Republicans alike,” he discovered the “universal” opinion of these folks: Barbara Bush is a stone “bitch.”  For Franken, the most enlightening “insight came from everyone who knew the Bushes. They all agreed.  ‘Dubya is her son.’  He’s mean.”

This is why Queen Barbara would make the perfect president for today’s America: she’s mega-mean, has a sense of entitlement beyond belief (a necessity, really, with our new political system of royalist fascism), and is sans any shame that would hinder her ability to continue pursuing the utter dismantling of American democracy already moved along quite well by her louse of a spouse and crude brood.

An admission: It truly matters not, though, whether any of the above or another member of the tragically ubiquitous Bushes secures the next presidential ‘ppointment since Dick Cheney, from his permanent undisclosed location, will still be in charge anyway, a situation likely to continue even well after his death (if it hasn’t occurred already), since an aura that evil is destined to linger for some time.

Still, now that the Constitution is no longer viable and the time many of us spent trying to defend it is now just so many empty hours, what better way to pass it than by playing a spirited round of “Pick the President”?

Just remember: If you take the Karl Rove or Supreme Court token, you’ll want to take a long shower afterward, too.

Mark Drolette is a political satirist/commentator who lives in Sacramento, California. He can be reached at: drolette@comcast.net. Copyright © 2005 Mark Drolette. All rights reserved. This article first appeared in Online Journal on April 12, 2005.

Other Articles by Mark Drolette

* U.S. Human Rights Record (Flayed in China)
* Comic Relief From Feith While Bushies Lie Through Their Teeth
* The Fashionable Politics of Face-Spiting
* United States Government, 2005 (Part II)
* United States Government, 2005 (Part I): If it Walks like a Goose…
* Hey, Look at Me, Everybody: I’m Evil! Who’s Next?
* Quarter Mil for a Shill: So Much for a Free Press
* Lifetime Detainment: No Pros, All Cons
* J. Kenneth Blackwell: A Man All for Democracy, Except, Uh, When He’s Not
* The Mother of All Reports
* Are We There Yet?
* To the Viktor Go the Spoils