THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. It's a real pleasure to be here at the Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison. I want to thank you all for that very warm and silent California welcome. You know, whenever I visit death row in Texas, it's a rare day when at least one cell monkey doesn't try to stick a shiv between my ribs - so I appreciate you all enduring the iron shackles, full-body harnesses and ball gags which will make this brief speech so uneventful for us both.

Today, I come to you as part of a campaign swing for California Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr. - who, God and Carl Rove willing, will lay waste to Gray Davis in the 2002 election. In doing so, I am rehashing many of the focus group-tested themes from my own 2000 campaign. Themes like "Compassionate Conservatism" - whose alliterative modifier may be reviled by my earhorn-wearing toady Rush Limbaugh, but is nevertheless essential in convincing a vapid and easily-swayed populace of my non-nefariousness.

Jesus - who wrote this speech? Fire him. How many times do I have to say I want plain and regular words? I sound like that sissy English professor at Yale who failed me in Victorabethan poetry!

Anyway, I'm here today in prison today because I want to talk today about Compassionate Conservatism, and the symbolismness of this setting is just right. This building itself is a reflection of my tough on crime conservativeness, and the fact that I'm standing here breathing the feces-and-urine-saturated air inside it shows that I am also compassionate.

As residents of death row, you all realize better than most that Government cannot solve every problem. I mean, it sure didn't for you - unless you count putting an electrified roof over your head until we finally get around to snuffing you out. And that's why I'm focused on creating the type of government that does just a few things, and does them very well. Things like offering juicy incentives to pitbull prosecutors to fry as many poor, colored, crack-addicted folks like yourselves as humanly possible.

And so today, I urge the Senate to pass each and every one of my initiatives - for the good of America, so that every aspect of our lives can be touched by my non-oxymoronic philosophy of Compassionate Conservatism. Of course, some liberal pussyboys like Benedict Jeffords will no doubt question the logic and reasoning behind Compassionate Conservatism. And so I'm gonna lay it out for them right here, using you all as examples.

You see Compassionate Conservatism is applicable to all of the problems which affect your soon-to-be extinguished lives. First, you are poor. We've got that covered. It is compassionate to publicly assert that elimiting poverty is a priority, and it is conservative to nevertheless propagate the socioeconomic inequity which dooms successive generations of your families to the poverty and squalor which breeds crime in the first place. Second, you are colored. It is compassionate to eliminate the affirmative action programs which assume that you can't succeed on your own merit, and it is conservative to be color-blind when sentencing hugely disproportionate numbers of coloreds to death row. Third, you are crack-addicted. Once again, Compassionate Conservatism to the rescue: it is conservative to impose especially harsh sentences on charges of non-violent possession of inexpensive cocaine, and it is compassionate to allow you to break the cycle of addiction while secluded for months on end in the drug-and-plumbing-free splendor of solitary confinement.

In closing, I want to stress that the measure of compassion is more than good intentions, it is claiming to have good results. Sympathy is not enough. We need studies funded by political allies which present a version of reality in which progress would seem to have been achieved. Because when families are traditional, when neighbors are reporting suspicious activity, when police are arresting, and when our people have the tools and the skills and the resources they need to pull G.O.P. levers in the voting booth, there is no problem that cannot be ignored in America.

(Applause.)

Thank you, Warden Smith. I appreciate your clapping. Are we still on for a 12:30 lunch? Then let's roll.

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