"If you come out and say you want the job, the media totally ignores you," Caruba told me. "Look what's happening to Tsongas."

But Caruba is certainly making plans. He plans to run his write-in campaign from his front porch. He plans to skip Iowa. ("Who wants to stand around in the freezing cold in the near vicinity of farm animals?") He plans to install a pool table in the Oval Office. He plans to grant statehood to any Canadian province that wants it--except Quebec, "which nobody likes, anyway." Most of all, he plans to inject a little life into an inevitably humdrum campaign. And he thinks he's just the guy to do it.

"I crack myself up," Caruba says. "I find myself endlessly entertaining."

HERE ARE THE FACTS about the Titan of Tedium:

He is 54 years old. He stands five feet, 10 inches tall. He weighs 155 pounds. He's got Jack Nicholson's hairline, C. Everett Koop's beard. He attended the University of Miami, and he thinks he graduated, although he doesn't recall attending any classes at that fine institution.

He's served time as a free-lance writer, an editor and a public relations executive. In addition to his Boring Institute duties, he's the founder/president of The National Anxiety Center, a watchdog organization dedicated to ferreting out cases of "the media scaring the hell out of people with stories about doomsday asteroids and poisoned apples and global warning." (If you're a little hazy on the concept, like I am, Caruba will explain it tonight on the Ron Reagan Show. No lie.)

He's got "the stamina of a bull, the courage of a lion." Provided, of course, that he gets eight hours of sleep plus "nappies." He drinks "medicinal" sherry on the rocks at four o'clock every afternoon. He smokes expensive cigars. He's a chocoholic. His sex life is mostly a memory. ("A happy memory, but a memory.")

Here are Caruba's views on some pertinent issues. Some of them even make sense:

Education: "It should be our Number One priority. It's a national disgrace."

Business: "I'm very pro-business. Free trade, the works."

AIDS: "It's a major epidemic and it's not being addressed as forcefully as it should."

Diplomacy: "I'd love to meet with foreign leaders. I think we'd get along famously."

Drugs: "Washington's been parading programs for 30 years with no success. Enough talk--it's time for some action. I think you have to cut off the problem by making it impossible to launder money outside the U.S. The way to do that is to make our international currency a different color. That way, it will be easily traceable." (OK, OK, I didn't say all of them made sense.)

Harvard: "It's a Mecca for nerds."

The Presidency: "It's a cool job. No question about it.