MISSOURI WATCH: ADVICE TO POLITICIANS: GET A LIFE

(Warning; If you are a public official, or aspire to become one, or one who aspires to another higher office, this column may be harmful to your digestive tract.)

If you are still reading this, the chances are pretty good that you don't belong to any of the groups mentioned above. Fact is, you may detest politicians so much that you have lost sight of the fact that the men who founded this nation were, for all intents and purposes, politicians themselves, although most of them were also gainfully engaged in some business or profession that at least pretended to be worthwhile.

Which is what I would recommend for the politicians in the above warning, since most of them are either treading water until they can get to a higher office or have decided their hometown newspaper will never mention them again if they vacate the office they so eagerly sought a few years ago.

I must confess that I am suffering from the biennial disease that strikes me the very moment we have finished the job of electing another set of men and women to public office. I bear up quite well during the campaign, perhaps because there is sufficient adrenaline flowing through this old body to keep me occupied with how Candidate A is doing in the polls and how many wards Candidate B will carry in his district and wondering whether Candidate C will ever raise enough money to pay for his last-minute television spots calling his opponent a filthy, philandering, cheating, wife-beating embezzler who has no honor because he has conducted such a dirty, disreputable campaign.

When all of this foolishness has passed, I am suddenly stricken with a disease known as HadItUpToHereWithPoliticians. The best remedy is to take aspirin and drop out of watching politicians until I'm better. Which should be any day now.

For some time now I've been intending to compile a list of acceptable behavior for politicians so that the rest of us could begin to tolerate their existence, and since I run the risk of being cured any moment, I'd better get it off my computer and to my editors before they contract the same disease, except for substituting the word Columnist for Politician.

Okay, I know you didn't ask for it, but here's the list of acceptable political behavior that's been hovering around in my head for months. Make that years. I'm old enough to remember the first time Harry Truman ever came to my hometown, back in 1934, so you can see how long it has been building.

Herewith Rules for Politicians to Live By:

1. Stop using the word "we" for "I." Whether you recognize it or not, you are just one tiny speck in the universe, not the whole blooming thing. I know some pretentious politicians who haven't use the word "I" in decades believing themselves to be something grander than a mere mortal human.

2. Stop pretending that the fate of the universe depends on your ability to win the current election. If the gods do not favor you, and by some quirk of inhumane fate you lose on election day, the sun will still come up in the east and go down in the west the next day. It may not do it perfectly, but your defeat will have nothing to do with any lunar imperfection. By the way, the tides will also come and go, just as they've done since Mother Earth has been home.

3. When you ask ordinary citizens, like all of us who aren't pompous politicians, for their opinions, act as if you are really interested, even if most of the time you really couldn't care less. I would suggest you would avoid the embarrassment of one politician who was unable to meet a constituent's demand that the politician repeat what he had just pretended to hear. You would make a half-way decent impression on everyone whose opinion you sought if you actually wrote down the advice being offered. Warning: Don't write a note to yourself to call the pretty woman you met earlier who slipped you her phone number.

4. Inform contributions who proffer you their hard-earned cash or check that by accepting their generous contribution, you are not obligating yourself to give them special treatment. This may sound like you're an ungenerous opportunist (which you could well be) but it will save your worlds of grief and even exposure some time down the line. Just remember that your Washington brethren obligate themselves to so many favors that no gigantic group of benefactors could carry out all the promises they have given to contributors over the years. You don't want to emulate those phonies, do you?

5. Start paying attention to the problems that are hardest to resolve and which, for lack of attention, have been around longer than Moses' nephew. Voters really aren't impressed when you boast that you have solved the problem of stolen stamps from the courthouse by installing in the state capitol. You are being elected to solve problems the public has neither the money nor the resources to resolve, problems like how to improve public education, how to assist uninsured families, how to supply essential services to the mentally ill and mentally retarded or how to restore the quality of streams and rivers polluted by corporate pork producers.

6. Never believe for a minute the pretense that corporate lobbyists are seeking out the public's welfare. They are in your office today to get special favors for their clients, most of whom have not one shred of interest in favors for Mr. and Mrs. Average Citizen. If Mr. and Mrs. A. Citizen had enough money and would gain as much from special treatment as special interests do, they would hire their own lobbyist. Never waste time looking for someone hawking the interests of the majority -- there aren't any. Pretenders are guaranteed phonies.

7. And, finally, if you keep hearing a small, inner voice that constantly repeats the words, "Get a life," heed the best counsel your conscience will ever give you.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.