An unemployed dog looks towards a brighter future.

 

JOBS FOR DOGS!

The other candidates have said that every American has to get out and work. No more guaranteed welfare. No more coddling.

And yet, we are still letting sleeping dogs lie.

I am speaking literally. For there are few tragedies so longstanding, and so widespread, as canine unemployment.

Do you know a dog with a job? Dogs have many jobs. Some are sheep herders--and by that I mean, they really get out there and herd sheep, all day. Some track down criminals, or sniff for bombs. Other dogs are professional frisbee catchers and appear on late-night talk shows and television commercials.

There is something about these dogs. Something different. They've got dignity.

They don't mope around the house, getting into the trash and then skulking around with their tails between their legs. They don't engage in that pathetic hyperactive jumping around simply because someone has come home. They're not spending the day wandering back and forth inside some apartment wondering why they can't figure out how to turn on the television. They've been out all day. They've been working. And dogs with jobs walk proud. They're good dogs.

When our foreparents worked close to the land, every dog had a job. Dogs chased birds from the fields, cornered rats in the granaries, went hunting, herded the flocks. But in the modern era, so many dogs had nowhere to go. The entire economy was changing, automating, centralizing. Eventually, most people found a place for themselves in this new arrangement of things. But not a single steel magnate, no congressperson, no policy wonk took a moment to think of those who had so faithfully accompanied us through the ages. They doomed dogs to a life of emotional codependency, in which their only function was to helplessly beg for table scraps.

Well, let me assure you that if you elect me, Joe Wright, as the President of the United States, the new millennium will see dogs become a part of the information future. I will do everything in the power vested in me as the leader of our nation to ensure a job for every dog.

Mean dogs can continue to work in the law-enforcement and security fields. Dogs who do tricks can work in tourist areas, increasing interest and thereby increasing revenue. Dogs can stroll through shopping malls, distributing coupons and circulars in open saddlebags, and providing companionship to the senior citizens who get their exercise by walking back and forth in these malls. Dogs can circulate mail within skyscraper office buildings, pulling mail carts through corridors. Friendly dogs with good herding instincts can work in preschools, gathering back children who go astray. And retrievers will work in laundromats, trained to find missing socks.

It's a new way of thinking, a paradigm shift. But if you will join me in this bold vision of full canine employment, we will see dogs joining their family members in the morning commute, riding on the seats of busses and subways, and poking their heads happily out car windows as we speed along the carpool lanes. Most importantly, the pathos of the modern dog will be a thing of the past, as dogs everywhere gain the dignity that we who work for a living know so well.

I am Joe Wright. I believe in jobs for dogs. And with your help, I will be the next President of the United States of America.