I’ve been at this for nine months now, and I have to say: it’s exhausting. An election is a grueling two-year string of the most brutal days imaginable, each packed solid with balloon rides, all-you-can-eat buffets, and handshakes. Being a sociopath, I’ve been able to weather the worst of the emotional damage. Physically, however, I’ve begun to show signs of wear. The problem is that sometimes I just feel a bit too fatigued to give as much as I ought to. A few weeks back, at the pancake breakfast, Anselmo looked concerned. He tousled my hair and gazed into my face, his eyes forlorn. He suggested that I get a little rest, and I nearly slapped him. “Rest is for the unemployed,” I thundered, “One does not win elections by resting.” He continued to plead with me, and at last we agreed that he would call in a doctor to examine me and make suggestions about how to stay healthy during this stressful period.

Unfortunately, Anselmo brought in some quack who thought he could make me better with diet plans and meditation. Where I come from doctors give medicine, so I dismissed this dude and found a doctor who shared that philosophy. His name is Khan, and he is a freaking genius. He’s been so helpful that I hired him full-time to accompany me. He is from Spain, where he gives medical advice to many top politicians. Due to legal troubles at home, he recently moved to the States and set up a small sports-medicine practice. I found him on the internet and told him to come by. Anselmo seemed skeptical, and hovered silently in the background throughout our entire meeting.

The physical was an real wake-up call. I had no idea that this whole endeavor was taking such an awful toll on my body. I was lacking pep, that much was absolutely clear. Also, my strength and endurance were atrocious, and my BMI was straight bullshit. I was a bit crestfallen, I have to say. But Dr. Khan said not to worry about it. He said that the modern American Presidential Campaign is, physically speaking, equivalent to winning the Tour de France while hitting 73 home runs. That really put things in perspective for me, since I’ve never done either of those things before. How, then, could I be expected to sustain that pace for another year? According to Khan, the answer is simple: training.

Here are a few things you may not know. Barack Obama typically stays up for 70 hours at a time and gives nearly three speeches an hour. Mike Huckabee has such a well-developed handshake that he can completely crush a constituents hand, reducing the bones to a fine ashlike dust. During September of this year, Hillary Clinton benchmarked a sustained flip-flop frequency of 12 times per second. They don’t get those kind of results with a few bananas and some soy protein; these candidates all observe highly rigorous training regimens.

It just so happens that Khan is a practitioner of this type of training. His program is called StumpStrong^TM, and it’s really quite simple: just a few dozen intramuscular injections each morning, followed up in the afternoon by a blood transfusion or two. In addition, I will be subject to twice-weekly “boosters” of a supplement cocktail, administered anally. Other than that, Khan says that if I just observe a balanced exercise schedule, I should notice a marked improvement in just a few weeks. If after an initial trial period I am unhappy with the results, we can look into some of the more involved procedures, such as gene therapy or having a second heart installed. Dr. Khan has done several of these “dualies,” and says they work out quite well.

I guess like everything else in this crazy world, campaigning for office has changed a lot. Back in the day, a couple of lines of blow off of a hooker’s ass was enough to give a Candidate “the edge.” Now, we start campaigning right after the Inauguration and have to have doctors on retainer just to compete. At any rate, I think things might be finally looking up!