I will run as a moderately liberal conservative who is a strong supporter of the First Amendment and a representative for the best values of the South: individual rights tempered by a love of God and family. My campaign theme song will be Merle Haggard’s “Rainbow Stew.”

My administration will be both pro-choice and pro-life, because the choices that we make in life affect other people’s ability to have lives and choices.

The first thing I will do is: assemble a Cabinet and staff made up entirely of Waffle House waitresses. They get things done fast, and they get them done right. They don’t give special treatment. They don’t care who or what you are. They don’t put up with any shit, but they always call you “sweetie” or “sugar.”

The White House press briefing room will have a house band. I’d like it if it were Galactic, but I understand that leaving New Orleans could be hard for them. If not Galactic, then Crazy Horse.

At state dinners and other official functions, we will only serve Natural Light (even though we’ll have stuff like Blanton’s and Knob Creek and beers by Good People, Bell’s, Abita, Red Brick, and a few others in a super-secret fridge in the back, but we won’t tell anybody about it— they’ll have to know to ask). We will also put the good liquor in the cheap-liquor bottles and vice versa, and laugh while the snobs and freeloaders drink the rot-gut.

Under my administration, anyone will love, live with, and marry anyone they damn well please, anyone will worship the way they damn well please, and anyone will speak the language they damn well please. But there will be two caveats:

1. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, it’s your problem.
2. If you don’t like what some other people are doing, leave them alone and live your life.

There will be signs with my administration’s mantra – “Don’t Be An Ass” – by or above every door in every government building, and all government employees will be expected to slap it as they walk by, like players heading out of the locker room for a home game.

Anyone and everyone who works in the field of education will teach at least one regularly scheduled class. Even state and local superintendents. Even the Secretary of Education. Everyone. No one in education will be insulated from daily contact with students and parents.

One other education policy will be inarguable: all school lunchrooms will offer Grapico, in addition to milk. Not Diet Grapico— real Grapico, because it’s awesome.

Using Average Daily Balance, Annual Percentage Rate, and other funny-math tactics to calculate interest on loans will be illegal. Only simple interest will be legal. If you borrow $1,000 at 6% interest, you will pay back the $1,000 plus $60 interest. That’s it, so all people understand what they’re agreeing to.

Community-service programs will be created to work off student loan balances at the tax-free rate of $15 per hour, with time slots available twenty-four hours a day. People can pay or work or do a combination of both to get them knocked out.

New national holidays will include Juneteenth and all election days, even for runoffs.

Instead of being sworn in to political office, all elected officials will have their children wish for them to be totally honest, like in the movie Liar, Liar.

Presidential Medals of Freedom will be given belatedly to bell hooks, Norman Lear, and Willie Nelson; posthumously to Myles Horton, Jerry Garcia, Pete Seeger, Stokely Carmichael, and Harvey Milk; in absentia to Oscar Zeta Acosta; and more currently to Michelle Obama, who is awesome.

To eliminate food deserts, the USDA will organize cooperatively owned farmers’ markets everywhere there is no grocery store: urban, suburban, rural, small town, everywhere. Instead of trucking food all over Hell’s Half Acre to get it loaded up with preservatives and chemicals, we’ll truck fresh food straight to where people need it. If we can build a satellite that will take pictures of Jupiter, we can get farm-fresh food onto anyone’s plate for a reasonable price.

To end obesity, everyone in America will come outside every morning at 7:00 AM, and the whole country will do 50 jumping jacks together, in unison.

Finally, in addition to the Easter egg roll and other traditional White House events, I will host a double-feature screening of The Patriot and Rocky IV every July 4th on the National Mall, rain or shine. Between the films, Widespread Panic will play a forty-five-minute jam of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” that goes straight into Neil Diamond’s “America” then into Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band.” And at the carnival that surrounds the screening, Toby Keith will be in the dunking booth— every year— forever.