Vote for Tom!

On this eve of Maryland's presidential primary, I am pleased to announce the intentions of our nephew-in-law, Tom, to run for president. He shared this with us over the weekend as we gathered at a restaurant to celebrate another family member's birthday.

You can imagine that this excited much interest among us. Much of the evening consisted of his developing, with our encouragement, his platform. We asked him a lot of hard questions -- he has to get used to the media doing this -- but it was difficult to trip him up. For instance, his answer to "What about foreign policy?" was "We should have one." Who can argue with that?

There seemed to be some question about where he stood on the matter of the rich and poor. On one hand, he believes everyone should be treated the same in the matter of taxes, for instance -- none of this sliding scale stuff -- but on the other, he feels that there should be some allowance made for health care expenses. Obviously, this part of his policy will take a little more thinking on the part of the rest of us, his advisors.

One matter that occasioned a great amount of debate among the group was Tom's assertion that, if public education cannot do its job -- and he certainly gave the impression that he believed this was the case -- the government should give all parents vouchers for private schooling. He did not explicitly state this, but I believe he would also be in favor of more recess. Also more pizza in school lunches.

The candidate hopeful tackled the issue of health care head-on. Under his leadership, everyone would get a certain allotment of money with which to buy health care insurance or otherwise cover health care expenses (such as, perhaps, importing drugs from Canada or buying them over the Internet). When pressed about where the government would come up with this money, Tom firmly stated that as the government currently spends at least this amount on such programs as Medicare, Medicaid, Medigap, Medimart, etc., his solution would require no additional spending.

He was also for no one being homeless, although he was a little vague about the details of how this might be accomplished. He's sounding presidential already!

Although Tom expressed some enthusiasm for a Fair Tax, he admitted to some reservations about what such a move might do to the economy in the short term; specifically, he felt that the economy would, in presidential terms, "tank." His opinion was that this would not be a good thing for the majority of citizens.

When the topic of the environment came up, I advised the candidate that the matter of waste should be solved by sending it all to Canada. After all, they share theirs with us, at least in Michigan. It is only fitting, then, by virtue of the ties of friendship that have long existed between the two countries, that we share some of our own trash with them. In fact, to show the Canadians how much we value their friendship, we should go one step further and give them all our trash.

Tom stated his belief that we should drill for oil in Alaska, but unfortunately I did not hear any further details on this subject as my attention was suddenly diverted to my marinara sauce, which had escaped the bounds of its bowl and was spilling over onto my clothing. I am sure, however, that whatever reason he expressed for harvesting Alaskan oil, it was very sound.

In his gratefulness for our help in clarifying his platform, the candidate freely bestowed on us various Cabinet posts and other positions of honor. One of our party even asked our waiter at the restaurant if he would be interested in serving on the White House cook staff. He did not seem to appreciate the enormity of this offer, saying only that he hoped there would be a "better position" for him. Some people just do not recognize a good opportunity when they see one.

I am promised the post of White House historian, because I like to make things up. No, no! Because I like history and I like to write. I have already archived a picture of the presidential hopeful that should prove useful in the event that, say, I would desire a considerable presidential raise.

So remember, vote for Tom! And pray for all his advisors.