Casting a Vote for Mr. Vice

I finally figured out what to do about the election. Why not skip the presidency altogether and just elect a vice president?

What is emerging from the elephant-and-donkey show are two serious contenders for the vice presidency. George Bush is a man of proven vice presidential quality. And Jesse Jackson could well be the greatest vice president in history.

If elected vice president, Jackson could keep on making those sensational speeches, and then he’d never have to figure out what the heck to actually do. The riddle of how to fairly give money to the poor without destroying the healthy economy of the rich can remain the great Zen koan of our time. What is the sound of one segment of the economy clapping?

Jackson would be able to travel to places where they normally shoot Yankees on sight. He’d bring fairness to our foreign policy by speaking with left-wing dictators instead of just the right-wing ones.

The clearest message from Election ’88 is the need to eliminate the presidency. Some would argue that the success of the Reagan presidency is proof that the country can run on empty.

All year, Americans have been moaning over the lack of an experienced, charismatic candidate. Even as the seven dwarfs have been biting the poisoned apple of voter rejection, we’re still not happy. Then why not let Undecided win and get on with the important job of choosing a veep?

Many feel that the lack of a presidential election would take the fun out of the campaign hoopla. People can’t see buttons saying “Blank and Bush in ‘88” or “Nothing in the Driver’s Seat and Jesse Riding Shotgun.”

But the absence of a star needn’t spoil the show. The Miss America Pageant survived the loss of Bert Parks. The Academy Awards kept chugging along, Bob Hope or no Hope. We’ll still have victory parties. There will still be winners. It’s the ‘80s mandate: an election without a commitment.

Think about how much better off we’d all be if the presidency had been eliminated years ago. Johnson and Nixon could have quit while they were ahead. Instead of escalation in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, we would have had a lot of dead deer on the banks of the Pedernales and hours of taped conversations with a dog named Checkers.

Here’s a little quiz to illustrate my point: Who was Jimmy Carter’s vice president? If you said Miz Rosalynn, Brother Billie or Bert Lance, you were wrong.

You see, if only Walter Mondale hadn’t run for President, we might still be able to remember him.

If George Bush gets the vice presidential nomination again, we could be treated to another late-night interview with him in his jammies outside his hotel room. That moment in 1980 when Ronald Reagan woke him from his sleep for a run-as-you-are party was my favorite in modern politics. It set the tone for the whole Bush vice presidency. If he takes the top job, we might see him, like Lyndon Johnson, go from being a joke to being an object of intense hatred. Where’s the laughs in that?

And if Jackson were vice president, then nobody would ever have to challenge him and worry about being the next Jimmy the Greek/Al Campanis, commiting some racial faux pas. And unlike the perennially returning Richard Nixon, Jackson’s photo would never appear on any dumb T-shirts with the slogan, “He’s tan, rested and ready.”

So write your party leader and say: Let’s leave the White House vacant for four more years.