'Jeopardy' winner next candidate

The Boneyard

Watching the election all last Tuesday night on through Wednesday morning, I eventually came to realize that the wrong man would be elected. George W. Bush should not have been re-elected — and John F. Kerry certainly should not have been elected. "Are you taking crazy pills?" you may be asking me right now. Well, no, I am not. The man that should step into the Oval Office is none other than Ken Jennings — a.k.a. "The Jeopardy Guy."

Jennings has won nearly 70 straight "Jeopardy" games, earning well over $2 million. He has answered over 4 trillion of Alex Trebek’s clues correctly, while answering only two wrong (these numbers are merely estimates). Ken "Dreamboat" Jennings is a machine. I have no doubt in my mind that if, in a real game of "Jeopardy," Trebek gave the clue, "The solution to all of America’s problems," Ken would, without hesitation, respond with the most astonishing, dead-on, correct reply — in the form of a question, of course.

What is not to love about America’s new favorite son, Ken Jennings? Every day I look forward to that moment at 7:30 p.m. when they introduce him and announce his overall winnings; Ken just adorably shakes his head and shines that cute, bashful, pearly white smile of his. Ken is a software engineer from Utah and is a devout Mormon. Much like that delightful, pink Energizer bunny keeps going and going, the delightful Ken Jennings keeps winning and winning — and by large margins. Have you been watching this guy? He makes the other contestants looks like they’re Sean Connery or Burt Reynolds straight out of "Saturday Night Lives’s" "Celebrity Jeopardy." I love how, on "Daily Doubles," he pauses for a moment and makes a funny face pretending he doesn’t know the answer and then he just seems to pull the correct response out of thin air. "Oh, I don’t know Alex, Who is . . . Gene Berdichevsky?" Nails it every time.

Unfortunately, not everyone loves Ken Jennings — I call these people player-haters. These player-haters view Ken as a little pipsqueak and they have the perpetual urge to punch him in the face. Fox has even approached Jennings about doing a new TV show called, "Who Wants to Hit a Millionaire in the Head with a Baseball Bat?" Just kidding — but if they did, we all know Ken would be smart enough to decline the offer. Many player-haters are bitter they do not know the capital of Kazakhstan, yet my boy Ken knows it like the back of his hand ("What is Astana?"). "Ken Jennings isn’t so smart, he’s just a little pipsqueak; I could maul him," senior Patrick Furey, a JMU student and player-hater, claims. Well Patrick, I think Ken — much like a puma — would do the mauling in a game of "Jeopardy."

Love him or hate him, Ken Jennings clearly deserves to be president. But I am a realist — George W. Bush will run the country for the next four years, so let me be the first to say vote Ken Jennings in 2008. The now mustache-less Alex Trebek will know his role — to serve as Ken’s vice president.

Perhaps, instead of this Electoral College garbage, the presidency can be determined by a game of "Jeopardy." All of the categories can even be political — it won’t matter. Once Ken gets in his "Jeopardy" zone — much like the Terminator — he can’t be stopped. The best presidential candidate for 2008 — "Who is Ken Jennings?"

Travis Jones is a senior kinesiology major.