I’m proud to say that the announcement for my candidacy for president has created a groundswell of popular support beyond my wildest expectations. My phone rings at all hours of the night with calls from anonymous supporters offering to get my name “out there” by serving me with high-profile, multimillion dollar lawsuits, and my fundraising chief, Ken MacDonald, claws at my door at 2 a.m. daily, bearing paper bags full of crumpled cash. He calls them “donations,” and he assures me that as long as the bank can read the serial numbers on the bills, they don’t give a hoot in hell about the bloodstains.

I’ve put Paul on the permanent payroll as campaign manager. He’s been trying to get a foothold into a winning campaign for months, but his resume was universally mocked by all of the major candidates. Even Gary Bauer refused to hire him, despite the fact that his present staff can’t keep even small-town reporters from calling Bauer things like “a primitive dingbat,” “a power-mad devolved missing link man-ape,” and “the only man in America Dan Quayle feels safe laughing at.”

The other candidates are suckers, and their loss is my gain. Paul has been keeping my name out of the police blotter columns since college, and he doesn’t know the meanings of words like “hopeless” and “lost cause.” I know this because he’s been trying to hook me up with his female friends for years, despite the fact they usually complain that I drug their drinks, drag them into an alley and try to sell them to the highest bidding wino.

All lies, of course, but Paul, acting as my attorney, has somehow managed to keep those little incidents tied up in various appeals courts for years, despite usually appearing before the judges in a state of yammering whiskey madness, with chocolate sauce dripping from his exposed balls. Let’s face it; the man is a political killer, and so what if he likes to cavort naked across the Boston Common wearing a Kathie Lee mask when the moon is full? He’s not the one running for office, I am, and I never get naked, folks. Not even when I’m nailing autistic teenagers.

I’ve also hired John Saleeby to run my campaign in the South. Even though I figured that I would handily win at least Tennessee because of my running mate, Jack Daniels, John reminded me that Lynchburg only has a population of 361, which translates to .00037 electoral votes. He convinced me to put him on the payroll with the following e-mail, sent from what is now our Mississippi headquarters:

The conventional wisdom here is that Bush will win by a historic landslide, Gore will take a token of the electorate, and you will be arrested the second you come ten miles south of Delaware.

If you think that drinking Dixie Beer and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd is enough for you to win the hearts of the South, you are insane. You’ve been savaging George W. in your hideous little rag for months now, and the governor of Texas is like a god down here. The conventional wisdom here is that Bush will win by a historic landslide, Gore will take a token of the electorate, and you will be arrested the second you come ten miles south of Delaware.

They’d like to get their hands on St. Fakename, Esq., too, for that thing he wrote a while ago about Convoy and midget wrestling. Country music and wrestling are serious business down here, and rumor is that Ted Turner went berserk when he read Paul’s little screed, and he supposedly has found a copy of some grainy videotape allegedly shot during your senior year in college. Trust me, Rob, you can’t handle that kind of action: a CNN broadcast of you covered in blood, with Paul’s voice behind the camera, and some unidentified crying woman… although my friends at TBS have said they found her at working at some Italian whorehouse, and Ted himself is prepping her to testify against you…

Nothing can save you down here except me. They love me here in the South, and for $1,000 per day, plus expenses, I can make you a hero. For $2,000 a day, I can even get them to understand that little - I guess “atrocity” is the best word – that MacDonald committed at the Alamo three years ago.

Hell, two grand a day is cheap for that kind of muscle, but I’m still trying to negotiate the fee. I shouldn’t have to pay for the time John spends in jail, and I hear that he’s there a lot. Public indecency is a serious charge, John, and I don’t consider getting caught masturbating in the back of a local KFC, humming Dixie Chicken, to be in the best interests of my campaign.

So, with my staff assembled and ready to do battle, it’s time to sweep on up to New Hampshire and begin pressing the flesh with the locals. Some might say that I’m starting too late, and that I “missed my chance” to “create a buzz in New Hampshire” since the primary is “over.” For the record, I created a magnificent buzz during the New Hampshire primary, continuing through Thursday, when I somehow awoke in a Hawaii jail, thanks to my running mate. Damn that Jack Daniels…