Happy Father's Day, Mr. Presidents!

This is that special time of year when, as a cheap afterthought to Mother's Day, we sort of vaguely celebrate that other parent who may or may not be around. We call it Father's Day, and our nation's various recent presidential people aren't very good at it, either.

The dad who best represents lousy parenting and America's image-over-substance marketing economy is, of course, our greatest president, Father Ronald Reagan. Married, divorced and married again, Reagan fathered children by two different women and adopted a boy with his first wife, shortly before he divorced her. The children who survived to adulthood described him as mysterious, distant, detached and cruel, while his personal diaries show absolutely no affection for Maureen, Michael, Patti or Ron Jr.

The Reagan child who turned that distant relationship with President Reagan into a full-time career -- adopted son and right-wing talk show performer Michael Reagan -- wrote in one of his autobiographies that "we were raised by nannies and maids." Th-th-that's not ch-change we can be-believe in!

Only one of our current presidential candidates can claim the "Reagan Legacy" when it comes to being a terrible husband, father and human being -- and that's maverick John McCain.

Not only did McCain dump his newly crippled wife and her two children that he adopted along with the child he fathered with her, but he also was a notorious womanizer while they were still married -- in fact, he wouldn't bother to formally divorce her until he found a very young, blonde and pretty multi-millionaire gal named Cindy who lived in a state where he could run for Congress, with Cindy's family riches.

Last time McCain ran for president, eight years ago, his own campaign staff had to tell him to quit flying around the country on lobbyist corporate jets with a young pretty blonde lobbyist who happened to look just like a (younger) version of his second wife.

His daughter Meghan decided to give him a "Father's Day president" of registering as a Republican last week, which of course is absolutely meaningless in a general election.

Barack Obama is reportedly a good dad to his daughters -- he is even married to his wife, which is rare for politicians these days. But his own father managed to be more distant than even Ronald Reagan could imagine!

Obama's dad was a Kenyan economist who was already married with several children when he won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, where he married another woman -- a young student from Kansas -- and fathered Barack Junior before abandoning both for a scholarship at Harvard, where he married yet another wife. Barack Junior never saw his dad again, except for a single visit when little Barack was 10 years old. Th-th-th-at's n-n-not ch-ch-change we c-c-can believe in.

Oh, and what about what's his name, George Bush Junior, the guy who is still, inexplicably, the president of America? There was this one time when he drunkenly tried to beat his dad (George Bush Senior) to death.

Happy father's day, everybody!

Ken Layne is editor of Wonkette.