My fellow Americans, today I am announcing my candidacy for President Of The United States for 2024. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you why I want to be President and to give you an idea of what my administration will be like.
I’m not gonna lie—my main motivation for being President is the pension. Presidents receive a pension of $200,000 per year. I’m in my fifties now and I’ve worked in private-sector jobs my entire adult life, so I do not have any traditional, defined-benefit pensions coming to me. 401K? Yeah, but I kinda underfunded that. $200,000 a year is just what I need. Shit, that’s over 16 grand a month!
My presidency will look refreshingly different from previous administrations. For example, I will not be attending any inaugural balls. I go to bed around nine and, besides, I’m not into dressing up and going out drinking all night long with a bunch of people I could take or leave. The First Lady will attend the inaugural balls in my stead. They’re right up her alley. She can really put it away.
My first official act as President will be to replace "Star-Spangled Banner" as our national anthem with "America, The Beautiful." Not just any version of "America, The Beautiful," though—the Ray Charles version.
I’ll be following my predecessor’s lead and will avoid the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That’s the event where a ballroom full of news media pricks get together to roast you, but you’re supposed to be a good sport and just sit there and take it. Then, the next morning, they all wake up and go back to tearing your ass apart for another year. I’ll be sending the RSVP on that puppy back, with the ‘regrets’ box checked, along with a little handwritten "Go fuck yourself" in the margin.
Don’t look for me at the Kennedy Center Honors either, until they award the music accomplishment part to The Bangles.
In my first few months, I’ll solve all of the problems of the country. This will be easy, since the solutions are readily available in most barrooms across this great land of ours. Believe me, I know.
Presidents are not kings, however. I’m pretty sure kings get even bigger pensions! Plus, you get your own jester. As President, I understand I will have to work with Congress to get my policies adopted. The solutions I will advocate are all mainstream, so I’m confident they will resonate with the general public, the House and Senate. Once in a while, a recalcitrant Congressperson may disagree with an occasional proposal, here or there. Then, I’ll just send the secret service guys over to kneecap the son of a bitch. It’s called building consensus.
As President, I will spend a lot of time with the heads of major corporations. Many of these CEOs have memberships at Augusta National and I have always wanted to play there.
But, the rubber really meets the road in tense, international situations. America’s leadership in the world is constantly being challenged. Fighting an entire army puts our soldiers in harm’s way. So, I figure it would be much more efficient to just whack the bad guy’s leader. You know who’s really good at that? James Bond! One of my first orders as Commander In Chief will be to recruit and train about a dozen of these guys. As far as I can tell, they seem content to work for a company car and an unlimited expense allowance. I think they’re mostly in it for the pussy.
I will save money on travel during my administration. A lot of the travel the President does involves raising funds for reelection, but I’ll only be serving one term. Why just one term? Because, it turns out the pension is the same whether you serve two terms or just one. So, what’s the point of working four more years???
Related, I will not be using Air Force One. I will fly commercial airlines, saving taxpayer money in the process. Besides, Air Force One doesn’t get you any frequent flyer miles and my old lady likes to travel, which we’ll be in a position to do when I’m retired, with that fat pension rolling in the door.
I also won’t be doing the annual State Of The Union speech. You might say, "Hey, what about the constitutional requirement to do so?" It turns out that there’s no requirement that the update be given as a speech, smarty pants. In fact, for much of our country’s history, it was pretty much mailed in. President Wilson was the first to turn it into a speech, probably because he was a college professor and you know how much those assholes like to hear themselves talk. After Wilson, succeeding Presidents followed suit. Well, I’m undoing that. All it does is screw up everybody’s television watching schedule. My written State Of The Union message will be simple and the same, all four years of my administration: "You want to know what’s going on? Try reading a fuckin’ newspaper!"
The happiest day of my Presidency will be Inauguration Day. Not the one where I get sworn in, but the one where my successor is sworn in. Look for me on television. I’ll be the guy in the background with a big, shit-eating grin on my face, because pensions for outgoing Presidents kick in at noon that day. Kaching, baby!
