To Barack, from George

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The List

Top 10 pieces of advice Dubya gave The New Guy after watching Monday's presidential press conference:

1. Make up nicknames for reporters. Call Helene Cooper Soul Sister. Call Jake Tapper Skippy. Call Michael Fletcher Specs. Call Helen Thomas Toots. Call Sam Stein Blogger Boy. That way, you'll be making it clear that you're the only serious player in the room.

2. What's with all of those well-thought-out answers, complete sentences and real words? When you interrupt yourself constantly and sound like an uneducated hick, it confuses the media mopes. Besides, making up words is just plain fun!

3. I'll tell you this once and only once: It's nuke-u-lar!

4. Don't promise transparency within your administration. Americans don't really want to know how their money is being spent and how their government is being run. Secrecy lends an air of importantuity to the operation.

5. Offer prayer as a solution. I'm proof that it works. For example, thanks to prayer, I won two elections I had no business winning.

6. Don't poke fun at your vice president. Every president should have a healthy fear of his veep.

7. Wear a bigger flag on your lapel. Everyone knows that the size of a politician's flag represents the level of his patriosity.

8. Call America's opponents "evil." That's the first step to scaring the bejeepers out of the public. And a scared public is a public that's willing to be manipulerated.

9. When you use a word like "stool," giggle like an 11-year-old.

10. Stop making eye contact with reporters. Unless, of course, they're pretty.