11/11/00 1:55 p.m.
A Modest Proposal
Me for president.

By Jack Dunphy*, an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department

entle readers, as of this writing the situation in Florida remains unresolved. Partisan passions are aroused, tempers are fraying, financial markets are in flux, and my cat is suffering from an inordinate number of hairballs. (My cat, you see, is a Bush supporter also. Had we lived in certain other parts of the country, she might have voted.) Surely neither my cat nor the rest of the country can endure this uncertainty much longer. I therefore put forth this modest proposal: Let's scrap the whole election and appoint me as president.

Yes, I can hear the howls of derision. "Unprecedented!" "Outrageous!" "What about the Constitution?" To which I say, So what? Our ideological opponents have for decades carved out new meanings in the Constitution, new rights and federal obligations uncontemplated by the Framers yet mysteriously discovered beneath all those pesky "penumbras." My appointment as president would be only slightly more outlandish than any number of currently accepted assaults on the nation's founding principles.

Clearly there remains dissatisfaction among Republicans and Democrats alike as to their respective candidates. Bush is shadowed by doubts about his intellect, while Gore is burdened by an apparent inability to tell the truth. If either of these men is eventually declared the winner, these lingering suspicions and the lack of a clear mandate will hamper his ability to govern. The times demand a clear vision for the future of America, new ideas that will coalesce a divided nation. To wit, I humbly submit the Jack Dunphy platform:

• We will invade France. (I think we've all had about enough of them.)

• We will annex Mexico. The nice parts, at least.

• First Lady:Gwyneth Paltrow.

• Yasser Arafat will be unwelcome here, at least until he gets some decent clothes. He might behave himself if he wore a nice Brooks Brothers suit.

• Uppity foreign diplomats will have their cars ticketed and towed, just like everyone else.

• The Dunphy inauguration will feature the public flogging of Jane Fonda and the beheading of O.J. Simpson.

• By presidential decree, the next two World Series winners will be the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs (but not necessarily in that order). There will be a five-year moratorium on any future Yankee championships.

(*Jack Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management .)