A while back I offered my plan to modify and modernize the Bill of Rights. I have decided to tackle another aspect of the body politic that seems to me ripe for an overhaul. That would be our system of Federal elections.

I’m not speaking of Congress now. It is demonstrable that Americans are almost as pleased with our Legislative Branch as Iraqi voters, who re-elected Saddam Hussein by a margin of 23,000,000 to zero shortly before we invaded and overturned the results, at least temporarily. (Since there are only 22M Iraqis, that’s quite an accomplishment. Not only were kindergartners voting, they were inserting ballots where only gynecologists usually go. They called it a dictatorship, but a country with a voting age of minus one is pretty liberal, in my book.)

You need only examine election returns for the last few decades to see that I am right. We return incumbent Senators and Congresspeople to office at the rate of 97, 98, or 99%. The widespread discontent expressed by voters applies only to your elected rep, that goddam crook, not mine, who takes good care of me.

I did think about simplifying congressional elections (and as you’ll soon see, all my modernizing suggestions deal with eliminating that annoying and anachronistic 18th century vermiform appendix to the body politic, the voter). Under the new paradigm I was developing we would eliminate campaigns and elections, which are tiresome and expensive. Each candidate would be given a certain amount of time to raise a campaign war chest. The money would be in the form of solid gold cartwheels, to be minted specially for the "election." On "election" day these chests would be opened, the money spilled out onto big tables (great television visual!) and counted by Pat Sajak or somebody like that. The one with the most money would be declared the winner. You could get the money from any source, or use your own. Downside to this proposal: It would leave us with a government run by good ass-kissers, accomplished liars who’ll promise anything for a contribution, people beholden to large corporations, and rich egomaniacs … hey, wait a minute. That’s what we’ve got already, right? It seems to be working well enough. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But the fact that our system of electing presidents is badly broken is beyond dispute. And I can tell you why. This country is now split almost exactly right down the middle between two completing camps that hate each other, and are growing to hate each other more every day. In 2000 these camps were represented by the Wooden Indian Party (WIP, or Whips) and the Stuffed Moosehead Party (SMP, or Simps).

(I guess I’d better explain those terms, you probably thought the election was between the Republicans and the Democrats. It wasn’t widely reported, but when it became obvious the Dems were about to nominate Al Gore a lot of party bigwigs met in a smoke-filled mansion and thought about coming up with an alternative. It was suggested they run a wooden cigar store Indian in place of Al. In the end, though, they stayed with the stiffer candidate. In the same way, the GOP briefly considered nominating a stuffed moosehead, but in the end nominated the dumber of the two choices.)

You don’t think the country is evenly split? Well, for the first time in 220 years the presidency was decided by two votes. One of those votes was cast by Antonin "Tony the Fixer" Scalia (and believe me, he’d have voted for the moosehead if it had been nominated). The other vote for Bush was cast by Ralph Nadir, of the Massive Ego Party. (The coveted ME Party nomination has been given in the past to such worthies as George Wallace and Ross Perot, but it usually doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. This time, it did. Thanks, Ralph.)

You don’t think it was close? Look at this:

Gore: 51,003,238 48.38%

Bush: 50,459,624 47.87%

That means Gore won by … sorry, I mean Bush won by a negative 500,000 votes and change. (Right there you get another big reason why our 18th century voting system is insane. The loser won. Go figure.) You know how small 500K votes is in this country? I can’t even see it, that’s how small it is. It’s a negative google, that’s how tiny. Now, I know the parties have always been opposed, that’s what parties are supposed to do, that’s what they are all about. But in my memory, they used to be civil about it. Not anymore.

This is not the atmosphere into which we want to introduce a disputed election. In most countries an election like the one of 2000 would have been settled with guns.

And more and more elections are being disputed by the Sore Loser Party. I don’t know where the SLP got its start or where it holds its conventions, but it hit its stride in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, and is thriving here in California with the Recall Gray Davis petition initiative. I grew up seeing "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards in Texas, but we all knew these were fringe loonies. Not today. In 2003 impeachment and recall as a means of getting even has turned mainstream.

I submit that this is a bad idea. Once the re-count was finished in Florida, once it became clear that the fix had been achieved legally and properly, most of us who didn’t vote for him swallowed hard and accepted President Stuffed Moosehead because we knew Candidate Wooden Indian would have done exactly the same thing if positions had been reversed. But I always felt we dodged a bullet.

So, what to do?

Well, the building buzz over a political career for Arnold Schwarzenegger was the coin that dropped in the slot of my fevered brain, and when I pulled the handle it came up straight 7s.

What do we Americans like? Really like? Three things: Movies, reality television, and sports. We like movies about superheroes and Terminators, great big bad bloody boisterous Jerry bucken’ Fruckheimer movies. We like TV shows about real things, like live car chases (Channel Seven showed one for two hours just yesterday, endless helicopter shots of a florist’s van twisting through LA streets at 30 mph), and we don’t care if they’re called "Decision 2004" from CBS News or "Temptation Island" or "Survivor." And we like sporting contests, from "tractor pulls" featuring behemoth creations with 6 V-8 engines running on nitroglycerin, to beefy guys dressed like superheroes swinging chairs and bellowing threats at each other, and lately, "Xtreme" sports, which range from dudes on skateboards to bungee jumping to hot dog skiing at the Olympics. Put them all together and what do you get?

Xtreme "Election" 2004! (I retain the word "election" strictly for old time’s sake; none of you will be voting in it.)

We can start with the "primary elections." We work it just like the semi-permanent NBA playoffs, which now last most of the year: a best four pins out of seven tournament. Round One is Arnold vs. Jesse Ventura, hosted by Senator Jerry Springer, live from the sold-out Rose Bowl, available on HBO pay-per-view. There’s a chain-link cage around the ring so nobody gets out until it’s over! It’s the Terminator Meets The Body! Arnold in his black glasses and leather, Jesse in his pink feather boa! The Battle of the Guvs!

If you think we’re going to have an important national "election" decided by the kind of blind, deaf, and stupid refs they use in the WWF (you know the ones, they’re busy chewing out a tag-team Dirty Cheater while behind his back the other Dirty Cheater drops a pile driver from the top rope onto the neck of a prostrate, stunned Good Guy), well, you’re wrong. The contest will be judged by an impartial panel. For the first one I suggest Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, Charlton Heston, Ronald Reagan, and Pee-Wee Herman. (If Chuck and Ronnie are having a … ah … "bad day," they could be replaced by an AK-47 and a stuffed moosehead.) I include the Wee-man because I’m trying to be impartial, we need a tie-breaker, and I have no idea of any of his political positions except on pornography, which he is in favor of.

But that’s okay, because all contestants should be prohibited by "election" law from discussing anything political. This isn’t about ideas, nobody has any these days anyway, and besides, who cares? All they do is lie and promise things they can’t deliver, that God couldn’t deliver. This is SERIOUS, dammit, not political. So the judging panel won’t be able to vote their political prejudices because they won’t have any idea where the contestants stand on the issues … again, pretty much as it is today. Judging won’t be hard, either, easily within the mental capacities of an AK-47 or an ex-President or a dude who plays one on TV. The rules are pretty much like the ones Harvey Logan suggested just before Butch Cassidy drop-kicked his nuts right out of Hole In the Wall. To paraphrase: "Rules? In an ‘election’ fight? No rules! UNNNNGH!!!"

Last man standing, simple as that. If he survives and can be revived, they meet again two nights later and they go at it again until somebody wins four.

Which brings us to Title IX. Last "man" standing it just a figure of speech, of course. According to Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, government support for athletic activities must be equal between the sexes, and I fully support that. But we couldn’t stage a wrestling match between, say, Mike Tyson and Hillary Clinton, though I know a lot of Republicans would pay a lot to see such a match. We couldn’t even, in good conscience, put Shaquille O'Neal up against Gray Davis. Twist that honky muhfuh’s head right OFF!

The answer to this problem is obvious: handicapping, weight classes, seeding, and a women’s division. How do we do it? What are the "rules?" I don’t know, you figure it out. I’m not the friggin’ coach here, I’m not the trainer, I’m the cut man, the guy who, when the punch-drunk palooka we call our electoral system staggers back to his corner, jams that knife into that swollen eyelid and sends him back out into the ring. You expect me to do everything here? Sheeesh.

I see all sorts of possible matchups in the women’s contests. How about Molly Ivins slugging it out with Phyllis Schlafly? Diane Feinstein vs. Barbara Boxer in the California Primary? Or a grudge rematch between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, only this time Nancy has the billy club?

You’ll have noticed a lot of sports figures in the examples I’ve cited. Frankly, I think it’s a great idea. We’ve already had plenty of actors in elective office, and a few athletes like Bill Bradley and Jack Kemp. They are highly competitive, and they’re famous. Let’s face it, could you fill the Rose Bowl? Could I? Of course not. Then we don’t have political careers ahead of us, do we? Fame is almost as important as having pots of money in a national campaign, even in our antiquated system, and it will be even more important in our new, improved "elections." I know it’s not fair, but that’s life. If life was fair Teddy Kennedy would be a decrepit ex-con rummy sleeping facedown in his own vomit on a barstool in Southie.

Problem: At some point we’ll have the presidential contenders down to a few dozen men and a few dozen women. At some point men and women will have to go up against each other, toe to toe. No problem. Here’s where we switch to another kind of reality TV. We ship all the finalists to Antarctica in August (down under, it’s winter in August) and strand them there. This will take the place of political conventions, which have evolved into the most boring live TV since Ross Perot’s last speech. Cameras will follow them all the time and we’ll get to laugh at their antics as they struggle to learn how to build an igloo with a blizzard blowing, eat raw penguin meat, and amputate their own frostbitten toes. Every day or so they’ll all sit down together and vote one contestant off the continent and back to a luxury hospital.

If this is deemed too brutal there are endless other possibilities. I haven’t had the stomach to watch any of the new crop of reality shows, but from the promos I’ve seen it appears they emphasize backstabbing, betrayal, conspiracies, lies, greed, pathological self-involvement, and building coalitions with people almost as vile as yourself, so I think we can all agree that triumphing in such a contest would naturally select a person strongest in all the qualities we want in a politician. Talk about your social Darwinism!

I can hear the objections already. Raucous and undignified! A mockery of democracy! Insanely complicated, Byzantine, laughable! Well, maybe so. Personally, I don’t find it half as much a mockery as an entire nation squabbling about dangling chads. And if you can think of anything more unfair and Byzantine than the Electoral College I’d like to hear about it. At least in this system we’d always get a clear-cut winner, and the loser would never get into the White House. (The loser would most likely be dead, which would pretty much obviate the recount issue.)

Also, most of the people I’ve mentioned have never expressed an interest in being our president. Well, so what? We’ll draft them, if we have to. And if elected, you damn well will serve, you spoiled brats.

I suppose it’s only natural that, in a country of laws, we’d end up with a government of lawyers. But we’ve tried it now, and I’m not impressed with the results. I’ve already pointed out the difficulty Gore and Bush have at appearing life-like. Aside from Al Sharpton, have you ever seen a bigger collection of boring stiffs than the guys running for the Whip nomination, other than the faculty during your sophomore year in high school? If we keep electing politicians and lawyers what we’ll get is more politics and more laws. If we elect entertainers, we’ll get entertained! Isn’t that better than what we’ve had? Fess up, which stirs your guts more, a president who shouts his despair and anger (in Latin!!!) to an indifferent God, soaking wet in a thunderstorm on "The West Wing," or a beady-eyed moron blathering about "faith-based" crapola in the real White House? We deserve to be better entertained from all the money we waste on government.

But hey! You don’t like this idea, I got another! (In fact, I got two!)

Notice I sort of short-changed movie actors in the examples above. How about a system whereby only movie stars are eligible to run? This system would be quick, simple, and even more representative than either the current system or the proposal above. On January 1 a national commission would convene in Hollywood and add up the box office receipts of every movie star in the country. Whoever made the most, wins! Then, on January 21, right after the inauguration, President Cruise and Vice-President Travolta would declare Scientology the national religion and require e-meter engram readings for every citizen to rid them of extra-terrestrial body thetans … okay, maybe this one needs to go back to the drawing board.

How about this, then? Virtual candidates! Remember Max Headroom, the first computer-generated character? We’ve come long way since then. (But not too far. That is, basic and jerky as Max was, he was more lifelike than Al Gore and smarter than George W. Bush, and had more charisma than either of them. Hell, George W couldn’t even spell charisma, not with a dictionary in one pocket and crib notes from Dan Quayle in the other.) A virtual candidate would be about as much in control of his words and actions as your typical living candidate today, have about the same chance of having a thought of his own, and would never get tired or cranky. He’d be immune to White House interns, would never drive his car off a bridge or screw movie starlets in the Lincoln Bedroom, never deny Poland was an Iron Curtain nation or say that Social Security was not a federal program or spell potato with an e. He would be immune to assassination; we could disband the Secret Service, save billions of dollars, not to mention the indignity of searching the diapers of infants for bombs before the Easter Egg Roll.

The more I think about this one the better I like it. Imagine a contest between The Hulk and, say, Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter. The green guy with anger management issues would be sure to draw the hate radio crowd, and Dobby would appeal to those who think Martin Sheen is a good president. I’d expect it to go over big with the new generation. Most of them spend most of their lives looking at digital images anyway, can’t comprehend black and white photos, and are confused by any picture that doesn’t wobble, zoom, jerk, or that stays on the screen for longer than half a second.

Or we could go traditional to get the old-timer vote, like mine. We’re only a few years away from being able to resurrect stars of the past, morph their faces onto the heads of stand-ins. In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t seen it already. Imagine an "election" between Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe. It would almost be worth it for Marilyn to win just to hear her sing: "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday Madame President …"