Be mine, Kevin Kline

And while you're at it, what do you think of an "Ice Storm"-style White House?

By Teri Zipf

Dec 15, 2000 | Dear Kevin Kline,

You don't know me and I don't know you, so we're even. I watched "The Ice Storm" the other night and I thought that if I celebrated Christmas, I'd want to have Kevin Kline. Not in the marriage way, but maybe in the biblical way and definitely in the "go out to dinner a few times and forever afterward casually mention it to all my friends" way.

Then I looked you up on the Internet Movie Database, and I saw you are married to Phoebe Cates and have two children. So there you have it -- it will have to be just the dinner. Since this is my fantasy, though, I'll have to ask you to not bring Phoebe or the kids.

If we do go out to dinner, I think we'll have a lot to talk about. For one thing, I figure that since you have played the president twice, you probably watched the election closely. I've been thinking: What if they did something like the "Dave" thing at the White House? Remember how in that movie, the president is in a coma and you play the president and you play the look-alike Dave playing the president?

It makes sense. Everyone said, "If only George W. Bush had Al Gore's brains. If only Gore had Bush's twinkly eyes." (Everyone also said if only Ralph Nader would do the Ross Perot thing, but that's another movie.) Everyone said, "I don't like either one of them all that much." And a lot of people said, "Boy, am I ever going to miss President Clinton."

No one can figure out what the Supreme Court was trying to say in the final Bush vs. Gore ruling, anyway. And a lot of people think Gore is in a coma already.

And another thing, depending on how you count the votes, both these guys won. Or lost. Or something. I mean, here's Bush, on the one hand, with a 154- or a 537-vote lead in Florida and a four-vote lead in the Electoral College. And here's Gore, on the other hand, with a lead in the popular vote of 300,000 (in some democracies, that is how they choose the president). No wonder people are confused.

OK, then, just as in a bedroom farce, Tipper Gore plays the first lady, and she falls in love with George W. when he says that in Texas they don't need warning labels on CDs because they execute rap singers. The real Mrs. Bush doesn't have much to do for the next four years, but that would be true anyway.

President Bush doesn't notice Tipper's attentions because he is in love with himself. No one is in love with President Gore. I know that in your usual madcap romantic political comedy-drama, there are all sorts of interlocking triangles and this is more of a flat line. So maybe we could bring in the former president -- Clinton -- for a bit part. People will be ready for that.

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