I will dispense this advice now. . .

· Enjoy the power and beauty of your interns. Oh, never mind. You will never understand the power and the beauty of your interns until after the media has exposed you in a futile attempt to make something stick. But trust me, in twenty years, you will look back at risqué photos of your interns and recall, in away you can't grasp now, how blissfully ignorant you were, and how fat and cheap they really looked before they were asked to lie under oath and then got their own daytime talk shows. Your sex life is not as dull as you imagine.

· Don't worry about your constituents-or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to make Al Gore look hip. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your shallow minds. The kind that serve you with impeachment papers at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday.

· Ruin one life every day.

· Scheme.

· Don't disobey the president's orders (especially if he's in your political party); don't put up with people who disobey yours.

· Cheat.

· Don't waste your time on the media. They can't quote you correctly, and even if they could, they wouldn't. They just want to sell newspapers. The battle is long and in the end, it's only with yourself. So take it from me, don't get drunk, fall down the stairs, and require knee surgery.

· Remember the requests of lobbyists who give you truckloads of soft money; ignore the whining of your voters. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

· Keep your old habits, but use taxpayer money to pay off the ungrateful tart.

· Waffle on the important issues. Ignore everything else.

· Don't feel guilty if you have no conscience. The most effective politicians I know didn't have any conscience at age 22. Some of the most corrupt 60-year old politicians I know still don't.

· Have plenty of flunkies.

· Be kind to your wife. You'll miss her when she runs for Congress and wants a divorce because you are a massive political liability.

· Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, but if you don't the voters will think you are gay. Maybe your daughter will join you; maybe she won't. Maybe you'll convince her to play along with the “First Family” thing; maybe she'll change her name and move to Tierra Del Fuego.

· Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your political career is half chance. So is everybody else's.

· Enjoy your power. Exploit it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or what other people think of your "abuses." The ability to spin your problems into oblivion is insignificant next to its power.

· Bomb somebody. Even if you have no one to bomb but a bunch of heavily-armed religious isolationists in Waco.

· Listen to what the economy is doing, even if you don't understand it. It's probably the only thing keeping you from being removed from office.

· Do not pay attention to what American Spectator, the Wall Street Journal, P.J. O'Rourke, the Cato Institute, the McLaughlin Group, Robert Bork, and Tarnish have to say about you; it will only show you how stupid you look to everyone in America with half a brain . Besides, they're not your supporters anyway.

· Get to know your fellow congressmen. You'll never know when you'll realize that you should team up because you have no significant differences and no real ideology, and that third parties are going to eat you alive in future elections.

· Be nice to people who have dirt on you. They are your best link to your shady past and the ones most likely to blackmail you in the future.

· Understand that lackeys come and go. But a precious few you should keep well paid. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, for as the more desperate you become, the more you will need to have them die mysteriously in suspicious accidents.

· Rent an entire convent of Buddhist nuns once, but make sure they haven't taken a vow of poverty.

· Rent the Lincoln Bedroom once, but make sure you get at least $100,000 per night.

· Travel. Preferably to worthless third-world pest holes where everyone thinks you're someone important and respected, like Teddy Kennedy.

· Accept certain inalienable truths: approval ratings will fall, the budget will have to be cut, you too will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, approval ratings were always great, the budget could only get bigger, and citizens respected their president.

· Respect your president. Well, pretend to anyway.

· Don't expect your wife to rule the country with you. Maybe she will, maybe she won't, but you'll never know when she'll publish her scathing autobiography of your marriage and strip away the last shreds of credibility you had.

· Don't defy Ken Starr or he will become a worse problem than Ginnifer Flowers, Linda Tripp, and Paula Jones put together.

· Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it, because you're all wading in the same vat of crap, up to your necks. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing your popularity from the depths of media coverage, wiping it off, putting a nice suit over the ugly parts and selling it at speaking engagements it for more than its worth.

But trust me on the lying.