Listen to 98 degree

As DEVOTEES OF free minds and free markets, we spend our nights pining for a major-party politician who not only looks dreamy while reading a Teleprompter but shows some passion for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

President George W. Bush's determination to be all things to all people has ballooned the national debt and created an America where the worst aspects of the moralizing right, the caring left, and Wilsonian do-gooders have become national policy. To top things off, his FDA has even banned the very ephedra that might have made it possible to stay awake during Campaign 2004.

But if Bush's many failings are self-evident to libertarians, it's equally clear that the Democratic alternative (almost certainly to be John Kerry as of this writing), will in no way be worth endorsing either. The only way we're going to meet Candidate Right is to make our own--and that's just what we intend to do.

In the spirit of the do-it-yourself culture and biotechnological innovation that we celebrate regularly in these pages, we've taken the liberty of building the perfect Bush challenger from the personality traits and disparate policies offered by the various Democratic office-seekers who at one point or another have thrown their hats into the ring.

reason's Dream Candidate

We've surveyed the field of presidential challengers, and only in our dreams do we see our Candidate Right. Mr. Sandman, send us someone with:

The Silver Tongue of Al Sharpton. Policies and politics aside, Rev. Al is the only candidate we can listen to for 10 minutes without falling asleep. With his bluntness and his phrase-turning acumen, presidential press conferences would become the ultimate must-see reality TV series.

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The Writing Hand of Bob Graham. The already forgotten senator from Florida reportedly has spent countless hours of his political career keeping a Pepys-like diary that detailed his every meal, meeting, and belch. Unlike the current occupant of the White House, Graham would leave a paper trail wide enough to keep special prosecutors and historians alike busy for years to come.

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The Eyebrows of Richard Gephardt. His bushy, golden tufts signify the tenacity and determination that kept the Show Me State representative extraordinaire running for president several decades past his sell-by date.

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The Hair of John Edwards. No one fills out an empty suit quite like the forever-young, ultra-coiffed senator from North Carolina. Although we deplore the popular image of Edwards as "Bill Clinton without the baggage" (duh, the baggage was the best part!), America's favorite working-class stiff cum multimillionaire is the cute Beatle in Campaign '04.

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The Backbone of Joe Lieberman. Although it's never been clear that he has even his own wife's vote, Connecticut's "Vinegar Joe" consistently stands up for free trade and the benefits it brings to American and foreign workers. That he does so as his own party repudiates NAFTA with increasing ferocity shows us something.

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The Heart of John Kerry. In the best spirit of cultural noblesse oblige, this Boston Brahmin supported gay and lesbian rights long before it was cool (not that it's exactly cool now). What's more, in 1996 he momentarily floated the visionary notion of scrapping the Departments of Agriculture and Energy and merging Labor and Education into a single smaller, albeit still useless, department.

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The Lungs of Howard Dean. Various Loud-mouthed rantings make it clear that the brash-talking former Vermont governor can be an unstable bully, but he made us swoon there for a moment when he first burst on the national scene as "fiscally conservative and socially liberal." Would that it were true.

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The Barrel Chest of Wesley Clark. The cashiered NATO commander's ability to score casualty-free victories against people America shouldn't have been fighting in the first place is more important in today's world than ever before.

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The Guts of Carol Moseley-Braun. The former ambassador to New Zealand not only managed to keep on keeping on following the humiliation of losing a guaranteed-for-life Senate seat after one scandal-plagued term, she's actually openly critical of the pointless and destructive War on Drugs.

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The Spleen of Dennis Kucinich. The former boy wonder mayor of Cleveland pledged to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act in its entirety.

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The Dud We'll Actually Get

While we're mooning over our presidential dreamboat, we feel a touch of sadness. Can it really be possible that a challenger could combine all, most, or even one of the qualities we admire? Given the draining, demeaning process of a long presidential campaign, and an electorate long accustomed to demanding ever bigger doses of government largess, it's a given that we'll end up with a candidate who combines the worst aspects of the dream team's members. From our nightmares, we've concocted the Democratic dud we'll actually get:

The Fast Hands of John Edwards. His lucrative career as the Southeast's King of Lawsuits suggests a presidency that would bankrupt all Americans, except for attorneys.

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The Sticky Fingers of Carol Moseley-Braun. Beyond her disturbing friendships with a former dictator of Nigeria and a boyfriend/staffer charged with sexual harassment, Moseley-Braun allegedly used nearly $300,000 in political campaign funds for personal expenses. Her questionable 1990 pocketing of money due her mother that was supposed to be reported to Medicaid gave new meaning to the word privatization.

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The Tarnished Tongue of Al Sharpton. Yes, he's a better standup comic than most late-night talk show hosts, but he's also one whose career was made by a brazen act of demagoguery for which he's never apologized. Would the reverend name Tawana Brawley the first head of a new U.S. Office of Sexual Complaints?

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The Hungry Eyes of Howard Dean. The Green Mountain State's answer to Ralph Nader would not only repeal the paltry tax cuts that Bush muscled through, he would "reregulate" the media and large swatches of the U.S. economy, thereby returning us to those thrilling days when three networks dominated television and air travel was only for the rich.

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The Strangelovian Madness of Wesley Clark. The general's hopelessly shifting positions on wars great and small follow a Poisson distribution of foreign policy overreach. That and his shape-shifting on abortion, party affiliation, and who knows what else suggest there's at least one voice too many in his head. (It doesn't help that he's gotten endorsements from both Michael Moore and Madonna.)

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The Starched Shirt of Joe Lieberman. The Nutmeg State senator is a nutcase when it comes to pop culture, which he finds too violent and sexy for children of all ages; with Bill Bennett, he used to hand out Silver Sewer Awards to the media's "top cultural polluters." More recently, Lieberman has announced plans to fight the War on Evil through Twinkie Taxes and duties on other "fatty foods."

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The Pumped-Up Biceps of John Kerry. His bizarre Harley-riding, chopper-piloting, reporter-threatening efforts to show executive manliness would have herniated a gorilla, but his Jesuitical denials that he ever favored force against Iraq, the No Child Left Behind Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, or NAFTA, all of which he voted for, make it clear that he's a 98-pound weakling when it comes to standing by his record.

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The Cojones of Dennis Kucinich. "Delusional" doesn't begin to describe the candidacy of a guy whose main claim to fame is driving Cleveland into bankruptcy in the '70s and using the presidential primary system as his own personal dating service (by all accounts, yet another failure in a career full of them). Apart from the endorsement of Willie Nelson, Kucinich is notable only for a stunning and unacknowledged 180-degree turn from rabidly pro-life to vocally pro-choice that coincided perfectly with his decision to run for chief executive. That sort of mind-bending flip-flop is all too common among presidential wannabes.

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The Motherly Instincts of Dick Gephardt. Like a hen guarding her chicks, the big loser in this year's Iowa caucuses built his political career around battling free trade and keeping Americans down on the farm via generous subsidies. What's more, he was happy to pay for it all with tariffs on everything from your Hyundai to your underpants.

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