A Nightmare On My Street

I had a horrible nightmare last night: George Herbert Walker Bush was elected President of the United States after claiming to identify with the concerns of the average American. An equally horrific vision of America in 1989 followed...

January 20: Bush, in his inaugural address, pledges to make this country a "kindler, gentler nation" by expediting procedures necessary to murder hundreds of inmates currently on death row, and by passing legislation which will allow the slaughter of scores of "drug kingpins."

January 21: Bush aides qualify his statement by exempting drug kingpins currently on the CIA payroll from this penalty.

January 25: After criticizing Gov. Michael S. Dukakis's reliance on the "liberal Harvard boutique" throughout the campaign, Bush nominates Harvard affiliates for more than half of the cabinet slots. Even worse, they accept positions.

March 20: Bush, in his first foreign policy initiative, convenes the first International Conference of Prison Furloughs. In order to be able to bargain with the Soviets from a position of strength, Bush grants furloughs to all American convicted murderers the day before the conference.

April 24: Vice President J. Danforth Quayle takes time out of his busy schedule to visit a soup kitchen.

May 1: Bush, anxious to be known as the "Education president," proposes a $2 billion increase in the education budget. To fund this within his "flexible freeze," he cuts $2 billion from existing education appropriations.

June 1: Bush unveils his fiscal 1990 budget, with NO NEW TAXES. "Read my lips, Congress, NO NEW TAXES!" he proclaims. "If you really need to increase revenues, then you are just going to have to raise the taxes we already have."

October 15: Following the retirement of two Supreme Court justices, Bush, true to his word, nominates two people who will "interpret the constitution and not legislate." According to Bush, they will interpret the Constitution to imply an end to legal abortion and affirmative action.

December 1: In leading the nation in the daily Pledge of Allegiance, Bush accidentally pledges allegiance to the Soviet Union. He is immediately arrested, and begs the American Civil Liberties Union to represent him in court. Unfortunately, Bush forgets that his first executive order disbanded the organization, and he is jailed without trial. Quayle assumes the Presidency.

December 2: Quayle says a prayer.

December 3: To gain the confidence of the American people, Quayle recites the first names of Bush's cabinet members on national television.

December 7: In order to decrease the massive number of Americans fleeing to Canada and Western Europe, Quayle is secretly replaced by a lifelike robot, controlled by Roger Ailes and Jim Baker.

December 14: Americans begin to notice a strange yet undoubtable resemblance between the new President Quayle and President Reagan during his second term. Quayle's approval ratings skyrocket, and even the revelation that he bribed his way onto the Republican ticket doesn't damage his popularity.