Well, George McGovern made it official. On Feb. 14 in the pages of the esteemed and wordy New York Times, McGovern launched the real start of the '92 Presidential Gig. Yes, just when you felt comfortable with the War in the Gulf overkill, here comes another kick-in-the-teeth Media Event.

Only God knows what madness is sure to follow and the strange tone the Race in '92 will take on -- TV hacks screaming at us in our living rooms, drunken press screws typing their fingers to the bone, and politicians criss-crossing the country breathing hell-fire.

When it all gets to be too much, we can blame that bastard from South Dakota, George McGovern, for our headaches.

McGovern's column in the Times was a polite way of teeling the Democratic Party to get its ass moving. McGovern said he will vote for the man or women who follows the "correct" platform. To gain McGovern's vote, this candidate must curtail aid to dictators, stop sending young Americans into conflicts that don't threaten direct U.S. security, develop an energy policy based on conservation and utilize the military budget to reduce the national debt.

This is the person that will get McGovern's vote. Great, so what? Read on for the bombshell:

"If no such candidate gets into the arena soon, I will," he wrote. "And I will go all out to win."

If I were an Important Person in the Democratic Party, I would be scared shitless at the prospect of George McGovern running for president in '92. We are talking about the man that was crushed like a rotten grape by Richard M. Nixon in '72.

On Nov. 7, RMN won 60.7 percent (47,165,234) of the popular vote, to McGovern's 37.5 percent (29,170,774). In the electoral college, the stats were even worse -- RMN carried 49 states with 521 electoral votes, allowing McGovern to carry only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

The Democrats are doomed again if George McGovern runs for president. And it would truly be a shame if the Democrats keep up their fine tradition of losing presidential elections. I believe the Democrats can win in '92, and win big. But the party needs the right candidate and I know who it is.

No, it's not Mario Cuomo, Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Bentsen, Walter Mondale, Sam Nunn, Patricia Schroeder, L. Douglas Wilder, nor Michael Dukakis (Lord, not again.) The man who will crush the Republicans just as bad as RMN crushed McGovern, maybe even wipe the Republicans from the American political scene, is Richard Gephardt. Yes, the Honorable Representative from Missouri will win the '92 presidential election by a landslide on the scale of RMN's murderous sweep of '72.

How do I know this? Well, let's just say I'm going on a hunch. I have a feeling for these kinds of things and a reputation for winning big at the blackjack tables in Atlantic City. Trust me, I'm a Journalist.

But there are some solid reasons why Gephardt, a lifelong Cardinals fan, will win in '92. After a pathetic run at the White House seat in '88, Gephardt has bounced back from being a losing presidential candidate to the House Democrats' top spokesman.

Gephardt has used his Majority Leader position to expound on a whole slew of domestic issues -- from tax fairness to education.

After a decade of Republican fiscal insanity and foreign policy blunders, the Electorate will be looking for someone who is concerned about home. And when the Electorate starts looking, their eyes will fall on Richard Gephardt.

They will find an articulate, polite, intelligent and telegenic politician who is more than willing to perform the hard work needed to bring this country back from Republican stupidity.

For five months last fall, Gephardt chaired a budget summit that tried and failed to develop a five-year, $500 billion budget. Because the Bush Administration and Republicans were unwilling to give up special privileges to the nation's wealthiest elites, the budget agreement failed miserably. But by keeping attention focused on "tax fairness," Gephardt was able to turn back on the Republicans what could have been a political wreck for himself.

There are only two problems with this theory of mine. In 1989, when House Democrats elected him to the Majority Leader position -- the second highest post in the House -- Gephardt gave a shaky pledge to not run in '92. But anyone who can avoid political damage from this fall's insane budget negotiations can certainly get out of a half-assed promise.

To get to the second problem, I must return to our dear friend, George McGovern. Let's face it, the man is good at losing elections and he'll do it again in '92. This is a man who failed to discover that his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, experienced severe mental depression on several occasions requiring hospitilization and electric-shock treatment. Granted, that should not have been a factor, but politics is not a Nice Business.

McGovern was also unable to shake cheap-shot slanders that RMN and his henchmen at the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) slung at the seemingly defenseless Democratic nominee. McGovern was said to support the three As -- acid, abortion (unlimited) and amnesty (for draft dodgers). The Republicans labeled McGovern as the candidate of hippies, aggressive women, smart-aleck collegiates and militant blacks. There is nothing wrong with either one of those groups, but being unable to beat down such simple-minded stupidity is certainly not the way to win a presidential election. Ask Michael Dukakis. He knows what I mean.