• a practicing schizophrenic
  
• a chronic procrastinator
  
• a focus-group dufus
  
• an ontological drifter
  
• someone who'll go along with anything
  (so long as it's within the margin of error)
  
• having a nervous breakdown
  
• having a nice day
  (I've taken my medication)
  

They say you'll know you're having a nervous breakdown when every alternative seems reasonable. Well, I have news for you: if you checked off any of the above, you are participating in the national nervous breakdown.

Let's face it, aren't you –– because you are an average American (and valued customer) –– having a hard time making up your mind these days? Don't bother trying to deny it. The polls are very clear on this point. One day you choose [silly product], the next day it's [other silly thing]. You tell yourself this shilly-shallying doesn't bother you; you've simply changed your mind. After all, people do it all the time. It's probably a sign of thoughtfulness (yeah, that's it). Above all, it's not your fault. Here, take one of these every four years and you'll have nothing to worry about.

There are a lot of theories about this state of affairs. The principal explanation suggests that we can't make up our minds about anything because there aren't any real choices. It just seems like there are. But not to worry, this presidential thing is just a symptom. In my opinion, it's the polls themselves that are the primary cause of schizophrenia. They take the choice out of choosing.

If the polls say 83% of Americans feel good about this or that, well, that's how you feel, too, right? The other 17% are clearly made up of bomb-throwing malcontents or the terminally depressed, and you're not one of them, are you? Tell me you're not.

But if early poll results show 49% believe this and 51% believe that –– admit it, something weird begins to happen to you. You begin yo-yoing uncontrollably. You revert to your four-year-old want-it-don't-want-it self. You tell yourself it's really not you who is confused, it's the "whole darn country, darn it." And what the hell is this "within the margin-of-error" stuff? Turns out it means four percentage points either way for either candidate –– in other words, 44% to 40% could be 48% to 36%, or it could be.... Oh, never mind. And you call this stuff scientific?

Some people say it's television that causes schizophrenia, some say it's the fluoridation of the water supply. I say Bill Clinton himself is the chief cause of schizophrenia in our country. He's the two-fer president. We've got Bad Bill and Treasury Bill. He's a split personality (just like the rest of us) and he ain't ashamed. We always knew this about him, isn't that why we elected him in the first place? The supreme schizophrenic candidate!

Carter almost didn't get elected because he had bad thoughts. We knew Bill had bad thoughts because he acted on them. Eventually, he even got on the phone and talked about them, endlessly. But he also knew what was wrong with the country (the economy, stupid) and fixed it. So he ends up with a job approval rating in the 60% range and a "personal" rating hovering around 30%. And although nobody wants to admit they actually like his scandalous behavior, who would want to have skipped these last four gossip-rich years?

To my mind, Clinton fulfilled his role admirably, both as chief executive and as entertainer to the nation. I mean, Bill, you were really out there, man (the only non-Latino ever to be voted "Most Macho" in Brazilian polling). That was some wild stuff. And muy Americano, dude. The big stud being serviced while eating pizza and saving the world. With you in office, who needs Dynasty?

We don't really want clear choices, do we? We want confusion but we want it in the same person. We don't want to have to choose between the frat boy and the wonk. Can't we have our cake and eat it, too? Isn't this the Land of Both-And? Aren't we the country that gets the job done? Makes the new! improved! planned-obsolescent product? So why can't we create the perfect candidate?

This is my humble suggestion (and you heard it here first): why don't we just manufacture the sucker? That's right, genetically engineered first executives. Why not? We've got designer sheep (Polly, the gene-spliced successor to Dolly), and soon, they say, we'll have designer babies (this is a market economy, you know). Why not grow our presidents from the chromosomes on up? That way, if we so wished (and we do), we could select for the wonk gene and the frat-boy gene. We could select for the anti-inflationary gene, the foreign-policy gene, the compassionate conservative gene, the locked-box gene, and then, at the very last minute, slip in the wild-and-crazy gene. After all, we want our fun, too, and we can't just count on natural selection or the current schizoid voting patterns to make our presidents.

Come on, how often do you think we'll get a Bill Clinton by chance?