If I ever run for Congress, this is the first thing I’m going to do. I’ll have a press conference to announce my candidacy. Then, at the same press conference I’ll present to the world my legacy of vice. No holds barred.

I’ll start out with the zany pranks and hijinks from high school and college. Then it will be on to controlled substances and my debilitating nickel slot addiction.

I would even make public all of my properties and assets with some bottom line dollar amount. Perhaps the most pertinent this month, I would reveal the number of sexual partners, type of interlude and age and marital status of involved parties for whatever sexcapades have come my way.

Insufferable personal embarrassment! Political suicide! Quite the contrary.

First of all, if you think you’re going to feel embarrassed or guilty about something you’re going to do, you shouldn’t do it.

It’s an excellent rule of thumb for staying out of trouble. As for the political suicide, very few people even care.

Let’s think about Wild Bill Clinton. When he was running for office, he claimed to have never inhaled marijuana. If you believed that, gullible isn’t in the dictionary.

The first image that pops into my brain when I see the phrase “B.A. 1969” on a resum‚ is a gigantic octopus-looking hookah sitting on top of a pile of text books in a dorm room. This image remains in my head until convinced otherwise by the person, and then I’m still suspicious.

In the Great White North, Jesse Ventura just became governor. Because of his high profile life as a professional wrestler, he couldn’t hide from his past. He was a Navy SEAL during Vietnam, which means he must have killed some insane number of people. According to interviews with his friends on A&E’s Biography, he was notorious for not bathing very often.

If you think about what SEALS would do for fun in Southeast Asia, you would have your suspicions about massive amounts of alcohol and prostitutes.

When he got back to the states, he rode with motorcycle gangs and hired himself out as a body guard. He didn’t even graduate from college. Despite these facts, he still won.

Criticism for Ventura is all based on policy and doubt that he has the ability to run a state. Since everyone knows what he’s been up to, there is no scandal.

The only scandal that has shown up is his attempt to fund campaigns through the sale of action figures of himself.

If one episode of the “Sony and Cher Show” does not provide ample reason why a man should not be in the House of Representatives, I don’t know what multiple seasons would do. Still, Sony Bono got elected. No one ever brings up that Cher ran off with Sony before she was 18 because it’s not a secret. It makes for a good love story, but a judge might call it statutory rape.

Jerry Springer got elected mayor of Cincinnati. Then it came out that he paid for a prostitute with a check. Springer admitted it and resigned. When he ran again later, his opponent pointed out that he shacked up with a prostitute. Springer’s defense was that he never said he didn’t, and apparently that satisfied enough people that he won.

How about Marion Barry in Washington, D.C.? He got busted in a sting operation with a hooker and crack. When he got out of jail he got elected again.

Here’s a message to Southern Baptists. If you want to boycott Disney for giving benefits to the partners of homosexuals, that’s fine and dandy.

However, I am personally much more worried that a guy like Tim Allen can get sent up the river for cocaine trafficking, not to mention his ability to give Andrew Dice Clay a run for the title “King Dirty Stand Up,” and now enjoy a life of prime time family television and Disney kids movies.

Even Cheech Marin can spend years vying with Bob Marley as marijuana’s number one promoter and today star in prime time shows and get parts in kids movies. Anyone who has come within a half mile of Charlie Chong should probably get a lifetime ban from kids movies.

It’s been my experience that parents care a lot more about their kids than the government.

They are at least more likely to know who their kids are than their congressmen. Still, they don’t seem to mind that their kids’ idols stimulate international trade like Michael Irvin and influence the human gene pool like Shawn Kemp.

The bottom line is that most people in our Judeo-Christian culture realize that there were only two people free from sin in the Bible, and neither one of them was Jesse Helms. I think most people know that they aren’t either.

People remember watching Cheech and Chong, and they remember what they were doing while they were watching “Up in Smoke.”

Regardless of what Bill Bradley was doing on the road with the New York Knicks, a lot of people are probably jealous of what he could have gotten away with.

“The Love Boat” isn’t what you would call the morality frigate, but still, there’s something inside each of us that wished we were there with Fred Grandy.

No one is perfect, and it seems the only people who expect them to be are politicians or have press passes.

There is so much support for coming clean at the start that it baffles me that so many politicians cause such trouble for themselves.

If people want moral authorities, they go talk to the local religious authority. When they pick who governs them, they go to the ballot box.

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Erik Hoversten is a senior in math and physics from Eagan, Minn.