Yost says he can't get enough political ads

Make it clear. "Kids get a much better sense of what you want if you use the term 'taking turns,'" says Karp. That's because they've learned to take turns in infancy in babbled 'conversation' with caregivers, he says. Explain that toys work the same way – everyone gets a turn.

Webmd.com, quoting Harvey Karp, MD, the author of The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One- to Four-Year-Old.

So, the other night, I was watching the 3,423,544nth commercial for the presidential candidates, and I said to myself: You know what, I used to care about this, but I don't care anymore.

Right now, I am just saturated: I've been dunked repeatedly into the vat of ugly froth that is this presidential campaign – I have been just absolutely soaked in it – and now I simply don't care: I just want to come up for air.

I just want it to be over. I'm fine with either the socialist Muslim undercover al Qaeda operative who just last week signed an executive order forbidding a kind-hearted Donald Trump from giving $5 million to the Blind Orphan Fund for Inner-City Kids; or, conversely, I'm also fine with electing a man who once tied a helpless dog to the back of his car and drug it across the country simply because he enjoys the smell of fur burning on pavement – the murderer and misogynist who will, on the morning of the day he takes office, lock all women up in prison labor camps and force them to bear children.

At this point, either of those two men seems like a fine choice to me.

Like I said: I just want it to be over.

Right now I'm simply looking forward to a time when everyone will stop their whining and complaining and their accusations.

Now, the other night, I saw something that disturbed me at first, but that then gave me a great idea, which subsequently brought me overwhelming calm.

I was sitting on my couch watching CNN's John King, the network's chief national correspondent. He was showing the swing states using a touch screen graphic of movable states. He was showing the states that Obama was expected to win and the states Romney was supposed to win.

And I was sitting there listening to him run through all of the possible scenarios, thinking: Well, it all seems very, very close from what I can tell, and a lot can happen in a week and a half – so who knows who will win?

While watching him run through the various scenarios, I delighted in the following thought: At this point, we can't know anything about the winner with certainty, but one thing we do know with certainty right now is this: After Tuesday, Nov. 6, it will all finally be over.

Or, at least, if this election is a real barnburner, and it all comes down to recounts in Colorado and Ohio, then maybe it will be over a few days after Tuesday, Nov. 6.

John King said, "It could be Colorado that keeps us up late into the night."

You know, it could be late before the winner is known because it's close, all the votes have to be tabulated, and this year not a single electoral vote is meaningless.

But, regardless, once all the votes are counted, no matter how they come out – well, at least it will finally all be over once and for all.

So that's what I was thinking …

But, then, right as I got that thought out, John King began moving his touch screen states from under one column to another again, and he said something like this …

"Now, here is a really interesting scenario and a real possibility at this point. If [these states go for Romney, and these states go for Obama], then that gives Obama 269 electoral votes and it gives Mitt Romney… also 269 votes. It would be a tie."

And I had never heard of anything like that before. That was completely outside my worldview. You mean we could go thorough all this – this two-year-long election process – and hand out all the electoral votes, and still come up with a tie.

A tie?

I mean, I knew the Electoral College system was messed up – but how can you have a tie.

I was absolutely dumbfounded. When I heard that, I thought: So, you mean, no one even thought to have an odd number of total votes in the Electoral College? This is a system where you elect the president of the United States of America and they can't even come up with a system that won't result in a tie.

I mean, even American Idol, Toddlers & Tiaras and the Miss America Pageant don't have ties.

And it gets even crazier. Do you know, according to the Constitution, how a tie is supposed to be settled? Part 4, section 22 of the Constitution, states that, in the case of a tie, the country "shall engage in a civil war between the red states and the blue states

for the purpose of determining a winner."

A civil war! Brother against brother. What the heck kind of process is that?

OK, so I made up that last part about the civil war. In reality, the county will be divided up into 12 districts and, the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the 12 districts to fight to the death on live television with only their wits to protect them. So, all that's left at that point is to hope you end up with Katniss fighting for your side.

No, I don't know what they do. It's probably mentioned somewhere in the Constitution, but who ever knows what the heck the Constitution is trying to say? If you notice, no one, even the smartest judges in the land, can ever agree on what it says, because our founding fathers, for some reason I'm still not clear on, decided to write the Constitution in old-timey English using 50-cent words that no one can understand, rather than having the forethought to put it in plain English so everyone could understand it.

Even in the parts of the Constitution that should be really easy, they go out of their way to make it complicated. Here's how the Constitution starts "Four score and seven years ago …"

Do you know what that means? Well, neither did I but I looked it up and guess what? It means 87. Look, if you mean 87, just say 87. How hard is that?

Another part of the Constitution is called the "Emancipation Proclamation." They should have just titled that part "And we're freeing the slaves." That way everyone could have understood exactly what it meant and there wouldn't have had to be a giant civil war to figure out what that part of the Constitution was saying.

But no, the Constitution is all, "Henceforth, so fore with, this assemblage of beings shall procure but not enunciate the jurisdiction, but not the aforesaid applications of the powers vested in the bifurcated houses. …"

Who knows what all that means? No one I know. (I think it's because our country's four fathers – Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington – wanted to make it sound important, just like, if you're writing a letter to the governor you want to put a lot of big words in it,)

Anyway, getting back to giant civil wars, I'm not sure that we want another one right now. So I have, in my wisdom, come up with a very simple solution for a tie.

...continued on page 2

...continued from page 1

Here's what they ought to do about Obama and Romney and the presidency: They ought to share.

This is simple. I am really going back to basics here. Think about it. What do you do when you have one toy and two children at a daycare center want to play with it?

Exactly. You share. Come on, it's not rocket science people. You can just let one kid play with the toy truck for a little while, and then you let the other kid play with it. Or, if you have two kids who are still hungry and you only have one slice of pizza left at the pin the tail on the donkey party – another game, I might point out, where there are no ties – then you cut the piece of the pizza in two and you share.

So that's what I think we should do in case there's a tie in the election. I'm suggesting a solution that goes back to basics. Share!

Starting on Inauguration Day in January, you swear in both Obama and Romney, and then they alternate days being president: Mitt Romney is president the first day (he gets to start since he hasn't had a turn yet), and then, the next day, Obama is president, and they just alternate back and forth like that, taking turns until the four years is up.

Just think what that would do to help bridge the political divide – to have the two of them sharing the office and making policy side by side.

In fact, I like the idea so much that I think they should agree to do this, tie or not. They should do it right now, before the election.

Look, they're both very worried about losing, and they are both lawyers, and just think: What do lawyers do when they're both worried about losing a case? They settle. They come to an agreement. They cut the baby up into pieces.

And Obama and Romney might even become good friends (as often happens, for instance, when two kids are forced to share a toy together at a daycare.) I can only imagine the immense political harmony this type of arrangement might bring about, something that would be a total breath of fresh air in our currently politically divisive atmosphere.

Now, I haven't worked out every little detail of it, but some of it would be extremely simple to arrange. For instance, the White House is plenty big enough to hold two families, rather than just one; and you could have one family live in the West Wing and one in the East Wing, and each president would get to use the Oval Office when it was their day. It would be just like Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in War of the Roses, and I realize that they both died at the end of that movie so maybe that's not the best example to use here, but, still, I think you can see where I'm going with this.

So, I say that, for the next four years, the two men should share the office of the presidency and alternate being president each day.

That way we could all have the best of both worlds.

For instance, on the days when Obama is president, we would have Obamacare, and so, if you were poor and you needed health care, you would just be sure that you went to the hospital on those days when Obama was president.

And, on the days when Romney is president, then we could go back to having no health care for poor people, because Romney is 100 percent solidly against it. On those days, there would be no Obamacare, so you would just turn people away and tell them to come back tomorrow – unless, say, they were in Massachusetts, in which case I guess they would be able to go to the hospital every day since the people in that state would still get to use the Obamacare that Romney put in place when he was governor of that state.

Or, if you take an issue like Iran, Obama could just sit idly by and do nothing on the days when he was president, but then, the next day, when it was Romney's turn to be president, Romney could bomb the living tar out of them to his heart's content.

I haven't got all the details worked out, like who would get to light the White House Christmas tree, but you know, again, it's not rocket science, and they could, for instance, flip a coin and, say, whichever one didn't get to light the tree that year could get to give the presidential pardon to the Thanksgiving turkey that year.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm not here to work out every little detail – just to get the idea out there so we can get this brilliant arrangement in place.

So if you are a political person reading this, we still have time to make the deal before the next election and we can then finally see some peace and harmony in our government system.