Al Franken used to be just a pretty funny comedian.

We got to know him as an adjunct cast member on "Saturday Night Live" who combined great wit with good ideas: the Al Franken decade, the reporter who wore a satellite dish on his head, and Stuart Smalley.

But Franken apparently craves more. In addition to his once-promising sitcom "Lateline," he has taken a second swipe at Meaningful Political Commentary with "Why Not Me?," the story of his successful campaign for the presidency in 2000. It is an absurd conceit, but he makes a case that he can dissemble, lie, and philander as well as anyone else in Washington.

Before any serious candidate can enter the presidential fray, he or she must issue the personal manifesto, and it is with his "Daring to Lead," that Franken begins. It makes the usual stops:

- Why he's running: He saw other recent candidates: Lamar Alexander, Ross Perot, Alan Keyes, and "tire king Morry Taylor. When I looked at them I said to myself, `Hey, I can do that!' "

- His family values: He and wife Franni "fell in love, blah, blah, blah," and he credits her for views on the sanctity of marriage "that I now share in principle."

- What kind of campaign he'll conduct: After eviscerating the presumed frontrunner, Al Gore, on all grounds except substance (concluding with, "Also, Tipper's no prize"), he assures America that engaging in personal attacks is not the "`Franken style.' I wish I could say that personal attacks are also not a part of the `Gore style,' but like many Americans, I believe Gore to be willing to do anything, no matter how dishonest or illegal, to get elected."

Having defined himself, Franken moves on to the campaign proper, which he relates through a series of press releases, TV talk-show transcripts, and a campaign diary that turns out to have been a really bad idea. He begins his pursuit, as any serious candidate does, by returning to his boyhood home, in this case Christhaven, Minn., where it wasn't easy growing up Jewish. He lays out his entire platform in one plank: lower ATM fees. It's silly, but not entirely so — especially when Y2K turns out to be a bust, except for automated tellers.

The candidate then heads to New Hampshire, but encounters little success until he departs again, leaving Franni to stump for him. Days later he tells his diary: Her "strategy of listening to people's problems and promising to do something about them seems to be working. Food for thought."

Along the trail, Franken takes every opportunity to mock almost every media figure (he describes Sam Donaldson, for example, as "almost unimaginably cruel" and a "toupeed blowhard") and every media cliche, as when he's a winner in the expectations game (meaning he's not doing that well but is doing better than pundits expected).

When financing the campaign becomes a problem, ubiquitous-policy- wonk-turned-Franken-campaign-manager Norman Ornstein recruits a well-heeled pal who feels strongly that insurance companies should be allowed to compete with banks. Suddenly, Franken is offered $650,000 by the Actuarial Tables Press of Hartford for publishing rights to "Daring to Lead." The "downside is that there will be no royalties from sales because they are not planning to `sell' it, exactly," he reports.

For Franken, the fun is in getting to the White House, not staying there. In his first 100 days, he names an all-Jewish Cabinet (secretary of the interior: Ralph Lauren), goes bipolar and barricades himself in the family quarters, and punches Nelson Mandela in the stomach.

It's funny stuff; the problem is that's all it is. Franken has done little more than gather together facts already well in evidence; he has neither revealed nor enlightened nor added to the public debate.

The best satirists hold up a measuring stick to society; Franken has delivered mere shtick.