• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 1, 2018

Hope Hicks and I have a lot in common. She was raised in Greenwich, Conn.; I live 15 minutes from there.

She was a teenaged model; I had the hots for any number of models when I was a teenager (mostly Christie Brinkley).

She had a cameo on the soap opera "Guiding Light"; I had one in "As The World Turns." She played lacrosse; I watch a lot of lacrosse. She got into PR at 23; I got in at 22. She has no background in politics whatsoever; me neither.

So really the only thing that separates us (other than a tiny age and gender identification difference) is that she can stand to be around The Donald, and I would rather have bamboo shoots driven up my fingernails. (Well that, and I would have NEVER dated Corey Lewandowski or wife-beater Rob Porter.)

So I figure all this adds up to me being the next White House communications director. I am just as totally unqualified as she was.

But there the similarity ends. I would run a slightly different operation, which I lay out here for General Kelly's consideration (if he's there long enough to get to the bottom of the column):

1) I would redefine White House PR as a means of communicating information to the press, in place of a workshop to construct elaborate lies to try and cover up the idiotic actions of the administration.

2) I would put Sarah Huckabee Sanders out to pasture so fast she wouldn't have time to pack her fabulous wardrobe or think up a way to put a positive spin on her departure. I would replace her with a cardboard cut-out of Sean Spicer. That alone would improve White House communications (and credibility) significantly.

3) I would stop the "little white lies" for the President, which I suspect evidence will show were gigantic, law-breaking, get-thee-to-jail lies. Contrary to what most Americans believe, the job of a real PR person is not, in fact, to lie, but to help surface the truth for the press. In a way that casts the client in the best possible light? Yes indeed. But if you are a true professional and you are asked (or told) to lie, you quit the account or find a new job.

4) I would take His Stupidship's cell phone and toss it in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Confident that he doesn't have the acumen to tweet from a desktop or a tablet, I could save the nation from perpetual, almost daily embarrassment and reduce the laughter emanating from foreign capitals.

5) I would authorize General Kelly to smack the President as necessary. Not that we shouldn't use our words first. But when common sense fails to prevails, as it seems to every day, I think a little corporal punishment might help clarify right from wrong.

6) For his next public appearance, I would rush the President to the nearest school shooting and give him every opportunity to rush unarmed into the building and subdue the shooter. I would ask nicely that the armed teachers not take him out before he completes his heroic mission (although in all that confusion, accidents can happen).

7) I would free Melania and help her escape to Canada -- just to see the relief cross her face, with perhaps the first genuine smile since 1998. Since he did such a magnificent job of raising Don Jr., Ivanka, Tiffany and Eric, he should have no problem with Barron, who might want to get ahead of the game and get fitted for an orange prison jumpsuit now.

 8) I would aspire never to talk to, listen to, or even lay eyes on the Commander in Chief.  That way I would have at least some credibility with the press.