As for the second, I think 'what' is more accurate, and not at all rude. The GOP candidate will be defined on paper first (using market research and focus groups). Only then will actual 'who's be identified, by their fit with the design paradigm and ability to adapt to fit it better. Then a bunch of joke primaries, a joke convention, and a vacuous figurehead will stand up for his photo op.

At this point we will be constrained by courtesy to say 'who' again.

The Democrats, meanwhile, will have 10,000 candidates, who will tear each other into little bits by the end. The one survivor (perhaps a decent chap, but not nearly as good as the guys he destroyed in the Iowa caucuses) will be so tarred with the effluvia thrown at him by his own party that the GOP will hardly need to run attack ads, so they won't: but all kinds of front organizations will.

If the numbers are close, crypto-Republican Ralph Nader will run again, in case a spoiler candidate might do some good. Or evil.

The American people, in their infinite wisdom, will vote for the candidate who's taller, or who looks best on TV, or who projects the most optimism, or who they'd like to sleep with. The networks will call states before their polls even close, and Hawaii will once again be irrelevant; the losing candidate will concede before they even vote.

Only once since I started voting has this process resulted in a President who seemed to know anything about anything, and who seemed, moreover, to care about the good of America, and not just feeding the Enrons and Worldcoms their steady diet of ripoff profits and political favors.

I still hope, though. And I vote every time I have a chance. I figure at least the next time some Brit says "your President," I can say "I didn't vote for him," cold comfort though that is. I wish we could have Tony Blair. I like him, though that may be out of ignorance.

There've always been Starkadders.

Also, if America refuses further Bushwhacking at some point, they'd have a Cincinnatus ready in line to serve out the balance of a term and lose in the subsequent primaries.

I do think it's likely that he will be paired with a new VP. I don't think McCain would do it -- he clearly likes being able to speak his mind, which he would not be able to do as Bush's VP -- but various ideas that I've heard floated include John Ashcroft (be afraid) and Condoleeza Rice (who would probably bring some voters that ought to know better to vote for the ticket, but would scare off a lot of voters, too). Or someone else associated with "the war on terror."

Ever since the South Carolina primaries, the chances of McCain joining forces with Mr. Bush have been very, very slight. They might do it if aliens were invading the planet and they were the only two people left who knew how to find and activate the hidden superweapon left here by a different batch of aliens.

Ashcroft's star is not in the ascendant. The religious far right doesn't like his proposed internal security measures, most likely because they find it easy to imagine themselves being the target of them. And Mr. Ashcroft himself has not been endearing himself to the administration by continuing to act like a showboating senator, rather than a well-disciplined team player. That's not good. The Bushes are particular about their house servants.

Mike, how firmly did the Pentagon say that? What was the context? That's interesting.

My own guess about 2004 is that Bush will be renominated (duh) and that Cheney will bow out "for health reasons." If the GOP is smart they'll replace him with Condeleeza Rice. If the GOP were smart, they wouldn't be known as "the stupid party."

John McCain will run as an independent.

The Democrats will nominate Al Gore. Particularly given their newly-foreshortened primary season, which was designed to produce a clear frontrunner quickly and which will act to amplify Gore's natural advantages: the loyalty of a lot of the party's rank-and-file grass-roots activists.

I'm probably wrong about every single detail in the above predictions. In fact, the 2002 elections will give the House to the Democrats and the Senate back to the Republicans, by a hair in each direction. George W. Bush will resign in mid-2003 as revelations emerge about intimate connections between the Bush family, the Bin Laden clan, and Skull and Bones. Two weeks later, President Cheney will expire of a massive heart attack brought on by apoplexy. Under pressure to conduct a bipartisan Administration, President Gephardt will retain many Bush/Cheney Cabinet members, and will submit Sen. Joseph Lieberman's name as his nominee for Vice President. In a bitter confirmation battle, Lieberman will be rejected by the Republican Senate when it is discovered that, hard though it may seem to believe, the Connecticut senator is actually a Democrat. Meanwhile, following the announcement of John McCain's candidacy as an independent, the Republican party will nominate George Pataki for President and, as a historic gesture and a slap to McCain, Arizona Governor Jane Hull. On August 31, 2004, the aliens will land.

Patrick, your scenarios (both of them) are as believable as anything else I've heard.

Even if we do, the New Hampshire GOP primary won't be as open as the Democratic one was in 1968, and I can't quite see McCain as the anti-war candidate.

I'll see all of you, and the aliens, in Boston in a couple of years. (Anyone need a membership for San Jose? Discount for extraterrestrials.)

Probably. I've heard some ick about him too. But he's better than That Churl, as I called her. And Clinton was far from great, but better than...

And like that. Evil. But less so.

That said, maybe he's just rottenrottenrotten and I haven't heard. Sigh. He sounded so GREAT last October.

"Shrub: the Movie!"... I'm thinking direct to video, for sure.

Patrick the Spampire Slayer?