We Need an Exit Strategy, Not a Couscous Recipe

New Rule: Presidential candidates must have news conferences and cut out the appearances on daytime TV. There’s a reason they don’t call it “Hardball With Kelly Ripa.” I need to know our exit strategy for Iraq, not Dick Cheney’s recipe for couscous.

This week, Dr. Phil aired an interview with President Bush and the first robot, er, lady. I wanted to record it, but I was afraid my TiVo would think I was a wuss. Especially at the end, when Dr. Phil made Bush act out his feelings toward North Korea with dolls. The president of the United States has no more business being on “The Dr. Phil Show” than glue-sniffing teenagers have being on “Face the Nation.” If Winston Churchill had gone on “Dr. Phil” he would have been outed as an alcoholic with rage issues and shuffled off to some center to break his cycle of co-dependency and get some closure.

What are we looking for these days from a candidate? Competence? Leadership? Ideas? No, we want to know how they feel. Thinking? Leave that to the Europeans. I want to know: Does George Bush cry at the end of “Charlotte’s Web” when he listens to the book on tape, and how did John Edwards meet his wife, and who’s a cat person and who’s a dog person? Oh wait, that’s right, I don’t wanna know insipid nonsense like that. I’m looking for a president, not a Lamaze partner.

I don’t need to know that you gave CPR to a raccoon, or that you still hold your wife’s hand at the movies or that your mom made you wear a skirt to school and tell people you were Scottish. I need to know that you know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. When are you going to have that “ah-ha” moment?

I guess I don’t understand the American public because they seem to want, above all, three traits in their president: strong, decisive and estrogenized. The first thing candidates tell us when they go on “Oprah” or “Dr. Phil” is that they always put family first, presumably because it’s reassuring for us to know that, should the launching of a rogue missile coincide with a first daughter’s ballet recital, well, sorry -- there’ll be other missile attacks, but a kid goes through third grade only once.

You see? He’s just like us -- isn’t that good? No, you stupid schoolgirls, it’s not. What is this longing for a regular guy in the highest office in the world?

Presidents should be exceptional. John F. Kerry, for all his flaws, is an exceptional person, and Bush -- well, he’s a special person. But do him the honor of letting him do what he was born to do: Unite the Muslims against us and put Jimmy Swaggart on the Supreme Court. And do Kerry the honor of letting him do what he was born for -- losing in a landslide.

Any man who’s come as far as these two has done something amazing -- raised millions of dollars by begging. Begging the kind of awful corporate swine that would make a maggot gag. Could you do that? No, you couldn’t. And we should honor that. The founding fathers, in their wisdom, made a system where the leader of our country had to be more than just some bozo at random. He also had to be named Bush.