For Next Year’s President, Tips From Future Voters

--By now, presidential candidates George Bush and Michael S. Dukakis probably have had their fill of advice from their handlers. Nevertheless, it’s time they heard from some of those upcoming voters--the kids of America. Child’s Play, a theater troupe, staged a “Kids for President” production, based on suggestions for the next President from 400 pupils at a Chicago elementary school. The 40 best serious and silly entries were performed. “Kids want to be listened to, to be talked to,” June Podagrosi, executive director of Child’s Play, said. Some of their creative solutions: convert the White House into a toy factory and order Congress to build toys, and end federal spending “on dumb things.” James Willis suggested sending the homeless to the mansions of entertainers Prince and Michael Jackson.

--New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean has gotten an insurance company out of the doghouse and in the process helped an 11-year-old girl keep her great Dane. Kristy Slack had written to the governor about Selective Insurance Co. of America’s decision not to insure her family-run day-care center if they chose to keep their dog, Cinnamon. “They wouldn’t write a day-care policy with any dog in the place,” said Kristy’s father, William, pastor at the New Life Presbyterian Church in Frenchtown, N.J. Kean, whose family’s collie, Maggie, died earlier this year, was moved by the girl’s request, John Samerjan, the governor’s press secretary, said. “He’s one of the great dog lovers of all time,” Samerjan said. Kean’s compromise stipulates that Cinnamon has to remain in an outdoor kennel while the children are at the Slack home, site of the day-care operation. “He said that he has a dog too, that he loves very much, and he knows what it’s like to lose a dog,” Kristy said of the governor’s call to her. “He said he’d like to meet Cinnamon and me one day.”

--Country singer Willie Nelson’s concert in San Antonio on Thursday will have the blessing of the San Antonio Police Officers’ Assn.--since Nelson apologized a second time for a concert he gave to benefit Indian activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of murdering two FBI agents. The police group had planned to boycott the concert--that is, by not working as security personnel--because the entertainer had never apologized to officers in Texas. Nelson issued the apology from his Austin home.