I want an ugly person to run for President. And not some Eleanor Roosevelt dental-disaster knockoff. I’m talking hives, disfigurement, goiters. I want all the pundits to have to learn to spell “psoriasis.”

If it’s a woman, I want her shoulders to make Janet Reno look like a swan. If it’s a man, I want Lindsay Graham to stammer “Oh, honey” into his seersucker every time he sees him. But I’d prefer to have its gender be more or less indeterminate after all the scarring.

I want its mate to be the first First Spouse to be blindly loving and lovingly blind. I want its running mate to have to avert his or her eyes out of nausea. Foreign dignitaries should be enraged that they are being introduced to a dog.

Why does Ugly get my vote in 2008? I feel like I could be sure that an ugly person had faced some real hardships. Ugly people lead terrible lives, and the strength of character born out of all that misery would make for a pretty good president. Beyond that, they’d have to have a death grip on policy to make it that far with such a grievous political flaw. Sex scandals would, of course, be out of the question. The only time they’d get called “two-faced” is if someone was being mean about the cleft palate. Ugliness is essentially competence, integrity and honesty all rolled into one.

Conversely, sexiness breeds distrust. Sexy candidates can hide behind their charm and build a whole campaign out of being a hot mess.

Just look at the current contenders: Hillary’s frosted shellac of hair, her Nurse Ratched pantsuits and her faux humanity all scream “Mommy Dearest” with an Oedipal twist.

And “Obama,” the safety word to Clinton’s dominatrix routine, is the sexiest one of the bunch. Other than that he’s the hottest thing sitting in the Senate besides Robert Byrd, is there a good reason for him to run?

But I don’t want to make it sound like sexiness is only a Democratic issue. There are hotties on the other side of the aisle too: Rudy Giuliani makes a better Marilyn Monroe than I do (and I make a damn good one).

Mormons are forbidden fruit, so Mitt Romney is automatically delicious. Also, his name is “Mitt,” which makes me melt.

And finally, there is John McCain. Surely, you say, I couldn’t find a cowboy septuagenarian attractive. My friend, you are missing out. Any person over 70 who is as vigorous as John McCain must be murder in the sack. And the whole Vietnam POW thing makes him a bona fide fox.

I would support someone who had to wear a paper sack over its face sooner than any of these people because their sexiness is a distraction from the important stuff. And sex inevitably includes a lot of pandering and mudslinging (for me at least), and I think those things should be kept out of the political arena.

Ronald Reagan once said that, “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first [he means hoing].”

The Gipper’s full of crap. Politicians shouldn’t act like whores, and we don’t have to ask them to. The politics of desire shouldn’t be allowed to seduce the body politic.

And don’t forget Reagan’s also the guy who said, “A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other [WTF, Nance?].”

That’s what you get for electing a pretty movie star president.

Steven Kochevar isn’t ugly. Really, no political career for him.