My fellow Americans:
As this election approaches its end, I want to tell you that however it comes out, it was a rare honor to have run for the office of president. From boyhood on through my adult life I've looked at Washington with reverence, wanted to be a part of the place. Few milestones in my life were more thrilling to me than the day I got there. I'm a Washington insider, my fellow citizens, and proud of it.

Oh, I know that for some time now politicians have been thinking they could get a lot of mileage by running against Washington and saying they were Washington outsiders. Every time you hear that claptrap a bell should go off in your heads, as it does in mine -- the signal that this is yet another politician who sees the electorate as a collection of dolts.

Dolts susceptible to the notion that integrity and high principle and common sense are virtues rooted mainly in what's known as the heartland and other places far from the centers of power and glitter, far from the cities and their corruption. You know the places that are supposed to turn out straight shooters -- the small-town Edens -- where the wind comes sweeping down the plain, and the waving wheat sure smells sweet. Apologies here to "Oklahoma!" and Oklahomans, who reside, need I say, in a wonderful state.

My friends, while I'd like to go into all the implications of the sniping at Washington, time is short, so let me just suggest to you that when candidates running for the highest office in the land spend a lot of time preening themselves on their roots and their distance from Washington, you ought to do them a favor and make sure they don't have to set foot in the place.

I suppose, my fellow Americans, by now you're wondering why I've made no mention of children yet. I care for children as much as anyone and I have a couple of my own, but for the life of me I can't imagine why every politician breathing can't get a speech out that doesn't suggest that, if elected, he as the leader of the free world will be preoccupied mainly with children.

When did you last hear a political speech that wasn't swimming in bilge about our children and our children's future? And we're not just talking domestic politics. Here we have Madeleine Albright, secretary of state, who can find nothing better to tell us -- as Middle Eastern war breaks out -- than that the children's hopes for peace have been dashed. Has everyone gone mad?

I want to assure you, since no one else is ready to do so, that I know there are a great many other quarters of the population beside children who merit our notice. That would include the huge numbers of taxpaying citizens who don't happen to belong to that revered category known as a family. When was the last time you heard any notice taken of them in all the blatherings about family-friendly this and family-friendly that? There was once a point to the use of terms like "my fellow Americans." It was meant to encompass everyone, but that, of course, was long before we were sliced into interest sectors: parents of small children, the elderly, minorities, gays and young-adults-who-may-be-cheated-out-of-Social Security.

So be it. I repeat, I want the best for my children and all of America's children, but I promise this fellow Americans. If elected I'll see to it that a tax credit goes to citizens who pledge to withhold their votes from any politician who has shown himself unable to speak three consecutive sentences without mentioning "our children" or "our children's future."

I'd like to say, too, as this campaign ends, that I don't consider myself fit to be president. Really. I would say they've lowered the bar a lot for the highest office in the land, and I'm terrified to think how much, when I let myself think about it at all. My opponent and I -- this is the best America can do? One of us is going to stand up and be sworn in as the new president of the United States? I suppose others in my shoes have had the same feeling, so maybe it'll all work out.

I tell you this, though. If they lowered the bar for presidential candidates, it's been lowered for pollsters too, not to mention the sources they keep consulting. Just look at those undecided voters, a mass of whiners with oatmeal for brains, sitting around relishing their newfound significance. And who can blame them, with pollsters and members of the media hanging on their every incoherent utterance. Of which they're careful to utter very few, lest somebody get the idea that they've decided and -- poof -- the pollsters and reporters go away.

So there I was, my friends, watching the television the other night where they were showing some of these undecideds being interviewed. Somebody told one couple that they sounded like people who had come to some decision -- had they?

Well, you'd have thought they were going to fall down dead in horror. Heavens no, the woman said, they hadn't decided -- there were still reporters who said they needed to come and interview them. You know, my friends, I just turned to my wife -- and I'm going to point out here that I don't usually mention my wife or children or mother or any member of my family, because I'm tired, as you must be, of all the spouses and relatives dragged into candidates' speeches for no good reason. Well, just this once I can say, I told my wife: "Honey, if any one of these undecided nitwits decides for me, I'll figure I have something to worry about."

My fellow citizens, I thank you for your time and your patience, and, if elected president, I'll be asking for your prayers, which we are certainly going to need as never before. I, in turn, promise to uphold what's left of the honor of the office. May God bless America.