Wishful Thinking

New Year’s resolutions tend to be a tad overly ambitious. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily. Plenty of us could stand to be 20 pounds slimmer. But the fact that so many of us resolve to lose those same 20 pounds year after year suggests that it’s time for a new strategy, one that leaves us more inclined to count steps toward goals and less prone to drown discouragement in ice cream.

So, with dashed New Year’s wishes from the past in mind, we aimed for a touch of realism in our editorial page wishes this time around. Losing 20 pounds would be swell. Losing 5 pounds would at least get the proverbial beggar’s foot in the stirrup. So we won’t wish for an end to all poverty and all wars. Here’s our wish list for 2005:

* We wish President Bush would fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for his disastrous lack of judgment throughout the 18-month Iraq occupation. But we’ll settle for more troops, more armor and an exit plan.

* While we are on the subject of the Bush Cabinet, we wish Condoleezza Rice would get her wish to run the National Football League soon and decide to leave the State Department. Doesn’t Commissioner Paul Tagliabue want to spend more time with his family? And by the way, Ms. Rice, L.A. needs a new team.

* We wish that in 2005 someone would invent CD packages that could actually be opened.

* In the Middle East, we wish that Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle settlements in Gaza would proceed on schedule and that it would lead to better ties with a new Palestinian leadership.

* Closer to home, we wish for peace between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Surely California’s best brains can come up with a way to protect digital copyrights without impeding the development of new technologies.

* We wish for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to attack the gerrymandering of electoral districts that have deprived Californians of competitive elections. He should rally the public against “balloting girlie men” who want to keep districts safe for their parties.

* We wish that after this year’s Los Angeles mayoral election the term “pay to play” would refer only to poker games, not to doing business with City Hall. And we wish that this plaintive wish didn’t sound so much like hoping for an end to all poverty in the developing world.

* Speaking of global poverty, we wish the World Trade Organization would finally wrap up its current round of trade talks with an agreement by rich countries, starting with the United States, to give up their outrageously unfair farm subsidies that hurt farmers in the developing world.

* We wish members of Congress would pick up a copy of the Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs and Security” (available at www.oilendgame.org) and use it as the model for a long-term national energy policy. We’d settle for an energy bill that doesn’t promise to subsidize a Hooters restaurant in Shreveport, La.

* We wish Microsoft would properly inoculate its virus-prone operating system so we wouldn’t have to spend so much time and money to practice safe computing. We’ll settle for a better spam filter.

* We wish Steven Jobs would replace Michael Eisner as Disney CEO. (Talk about sweet revenge!) We’d settle for a Mickey Mouse-themed iPod, though.

* We wish all Supreme Court justices, eight of whom are 65 or older, at least four more years of health and a desire to show up for work.

* We wish NFL players would honor the late Vince Lombardi’s advice to “act like you’ve been there before” after scoring a touchdown. We’ll settle for NBA players who don’t go into the stands.

* We wish for an entire year devoid of Boston Red Sox hype.

* We wish Shaq were still on the attack in Los Angeles. We’ll settle for an end to the sadly lurid Lakers soap opera.

* We wish for a reality TV show about producers and writers pitching dopey reality TV show plots. Actually, what we really want is a new sitcom worth watching. Where’s the next “Seinfeld”?

* We wish Bill Clinton would take over the Democratic National Committee. We’re not ready to settle for Hillary as a presumptive presidential candidate.

* We wish Bush and Congress would get serious about immigration reform, with a policy acknowledging the nation’s reliance on hardworking undocumented workers. At the least, California should provide a driver’s license to anyone able to drive a vehicle, regardless of their immigration status.

* We wish that UCLA would step in to run a pared-down physician training program at the troubled Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, transforming it into a nationally recognized center for multicultural health. We’d settle for King/Drew remaining open, period, even as a much smaller, non-teaching hospital.

* We wish for a backlash against the testing craze in our schools. A child who understands the concepts of mathematics, the principles of science, the foundation of history, the value of the arts and the joy of reading will do fine on the tests and, more important, on the real challenges of life.

* We wish for a quick and cooperative resolution of labor issues between teachers and the Los Angeles Unified School District and a contract that reflects the needs of students rather than the muscle-flexing of the powerful teachers union.

* We wish the courts would strike down all further attempts to introduce creationism and “intelligent design” as part of the curriculum in public schools. We’ll settle for nothing less.

* We wish the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would persuade Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) to change a law that prohibits using federal money for a subway line down Wilshire Boulevard. We’d settle for ticket machines that don’t reject any dollar bill that isn’t crackling fresh.

* We wish to see a supermarket open downtown to keep pace with the booming loft conversions and new condominiums. It doesn’t have to stock 35 varieties of endive; we’d take three or four ice cream choices.

* We wish for a Michael Jackson trial that is not a media circus. OK, you’re right, that’s definitely asking for too much.

Happy New Year.