The Adlai Stevenson Memorial Anthropocene Petting Zoo
The highlight reel of my regrettable administration.
In order to stop wanting to be President,1 one would first have to start, which I never have. Being human, I have always coveted power, but I never thought my abilities were compatible with such an office. I would have greatly preferred serving as Premier of Queensland or Menteri Besar of Kelantan or the President of the Nazareth, Pennsylvania Board of Education. Under the auspices of any of those departments, the fullest measure of my authority would soar to the utmost precipice of human greatness, at least to such a height as to merit a bathroom mural in a local café.
That hasn’t worked out. As with everyone else, my desires have seldom been commensurate with their real-life outcome. Not only did I not have the fortune of being born in Australia, Malaysia, or eastern PA, but I was also not fortunate enough to avoid becoming President of the United States.
This is news to you, perhaps, as it is to most people to whom I tell this woeful tale. But the thing is, it’s news to me as well. Each day is more unbelievable than the day before, my first day seems to have undergone generous redaction. Perhaps my mortification toward anything ceremonial was what took the black marker remorselessly to my memory of inauguration, but my sense of being President of the United States seems to have always been with me.
The question now remains: when was I not President of the United States?
I cannot give you the answer to that question, for I have no time to think about it. Being President of the United States leaves me with so little time to think about much of anything. Not being in my taxpayer-funded galoshes, you may be skeptical; that’s fair, and I would not wish anyone else to be in them, so trying and tedious is this position. Allow me to tell you what it involves.
I wake up every day at about 1:00 PM, the average time at which things that don’t absolutely require my direct intervention taper off. I have a light breakfast with my First Lady, a 30-pack of Miller Lite that identifies as a packet of ramen noodles. It is currently on a goodwill relief tour in Saskatchewan before jetting off to several “ideas” conferences. I am fortunate to have a First Lady that polls consistently well and carries substantial moral authority.
In place of the First Lady I am usually accompanied by my chief of staff, Iggy Pop. Mr. Pop was not interested when I first tapped him for the position; a Presidential Medal of Honor being more to his taste. But alas, I felt medals, civilian and military, were a strain on national morale; I can’t well give a medal to one person and then not give them out to the rest of the country. So from here on in, everyone gets a ribbon for Commendable Civic Existence—Morgan Prizes, for short. But I digress.
After hours of my most dogged powers of persuasion, I met Iggy halfway by fusing his head to the body of an orangutan. This was probably one of my finest decisions. It demonstrates my gift for compromise and America’s enduring leadership in scientific innovation. Pop’s situation has done nothing to deter his mastery of rhetoric and ironclad organizational resolve. Neither cabinet secretary nor visiting foreign counterpart nor Girl Scout troop is immune to his indomitable will. No conference has ever gone off-topic where no strategic advantage could be gained from doing so.
Once breakfast is done, Iggy whisks me to my first of several crisis meetings. The first is usually to address scandals, which are so numerous that I cannot list them all here, but I can share my top three.
We’ve received some less than charitable press about our foreign and civil service appointment policies. Career diplomats and civil servants are being abruptly and unethically removed from their positions and replaced with staffers well outside the traditional talent pools, specifically from carnivals and fairgrounds across the nation. As a result, the civil service comportment, the unending reports go, have taken on an “unseemly” character. Foreign dignitaries complain that our International goodwill summits lack any and all indication of it under these conditions. Meanwhile, those who’ve managed to keep their positions are prevented from actually working in them due to being sequestered in an undisclosed Six Flags amusement park until I deem them fit to leave. To the first matter, carnies are the moral backbone of this great nation. Any talk of “unseemliness” must be directed back at you as well, if you are a true patriot. To the second, it seems only reasonable for someone in my position: swear a loyalty oath or ride the Kingda Ka until I can trust their integrity. But you’re not in my position, so what do you know?
I had earned considerable plaudits from media and public alike for my closing of Guantanamo Bay and distributing its inmates to conventional federal penitentiaries. This very quickly turned to condemnation when it was later revealed that I opened a near-identical facility in Sag Harbor, Long Island. “It’s rosé all day for America’s national security liabilities,” went one commentator. I think the brunt of the disapproval stems from the convoluted protocols involved in locating a maximum-security detention center in the middle of a summer getaway destination. Things are tied up in federal court as to the constitutional grounding of a “staycation.”
Further flack is directed at me for appropriating public lands for “demolition derbies.” This is a gross mischaracterization. They’re not demolition derbies, they’re sudden death decathlons in which arts and research grant applicants compete against federal inmates and Amazon warehouse employees in feats of strength, tests of will, and games of survival. Win more than three and you get an extra Morgan Prize and a chance to hit the Secretary of Transportation in the head with a rock of your choosing.
Once these are safely managed, it is off to the press conference. My press secretary Cat Marnell was as reluctant as Pop to join my administration. And she, too, drove a hard bargain that was resolved by having her converted to a full-sized marionette. She dazzles and deflects the press pretty effectively, but not so much that she distracts them from asking the “tough questions,” often centered on my “blockade” of the state of “Indiana.” Every day they ask me if my actions “against” the state are “just” or “within the proper bounds” of my office, to which Cat always helpfully and forcefully responds that the people of Indiana are perfectly capable to start behaving like literally anything other than the under-medicated latchkey kids they currently choose to resemble and that I am exerting the utmost extreme of my patience in anticipation for that day.
After the press conference I return to the Oval Office where the day’s contents of the National Suggestion Box are awaiting review. In order to not become aloof to the public weal, I hang the Suggestion Box on the front gate of the White House where any and all citizens can address their concerns. After Pop separates the threats, excrement, non-citizen suggestions, and obscene polaroids, I sift through the appropriate material. They vary to certain degrees in style while maintaining a familiar sentiment. “Smile more, plz,” says Carrie from Boise. “Need healthcare,” Sam T. from Bernalillo, New Mexico writes. Danny from Jackson Heights and Janet from Chelsea both ask that I “do something” about the “rats” whose presence has apparently become a more noteworthy than usual problem in metropolitan New York. “Send food,” Shawna from Fort Wayne suggests with no attendant magic word.
A second crisis meeting! This time with the top military brass. These tend to be rather more efficient compared to the damage control meetings. They are meant to address our present war situation, where I ask if the progress has been robust, if the combat morale is high, and where again is the fighting taking place. To which they answer: sure, more or less, and here, here, here, here, and time permitting, here. In some of these meetings I like to put out feelers that I may or may not “support the troops” at levels generally agreed upon among the public. I kick my galoshes’d feet up on the table and opine that, actually, the troops totally suck when I think about it. I figure if I do this frequently enough this will inspire a coup that gets me out of this place, but it never comes to pass. They just look at me like I’m a toddler in a high chair and ask if I want to drone something to “let off steam.” Fine, I acquiesce, and spin the globe.
Round about this time I take a brooding stroll along the west colonnade where “Tex,” my taxpayer-funded wise cowboy follows just behind me strumming pensive chords on his guitar.
“You look mighty beat, Mr. President.”
“Please, Tex, call me ‘Your Excellency.’”
“Much obliged.”
“And yes, it’s been a rough day.”
“You take on too much, if I may say so.”
“The hazards of my office, I’m afraid.”
“The people should thank’ya for takin’ on their burdens so, Your Excellency.”
“The American people’s pliant apathy is thanks enough,” I lie.
“You’re a credit to our nation’s cause, Your Excellency. Mind you to direct me to the orgy room?”
“There is no ‘orgy room,’ Tex, there is just an Anthropocene petting zoo, teeming with people who’ve disappointed me personally at different points of my life. It is in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, and of such skin-peeling intimacy that its compensates for my memoirs. So mind your virtues.”
“Much obliged.” He walks away, still strumming but fading out.
In fairness, not all days are like this. Sometimes things fall into place in such a way that I manage to actually put out a fire that doesn’t just ignite a new one. In fact, I end this day with a meeting with my cabinet and leaders of Congress on an idea I had. “Let’s deploy the National Guard and FEMA to New York to collect the rats,” I tell them, “bake them into an enormous cake, and send it over to Indianapolis. Do we have the requisite funds for three tons of buttercream frosting?” They are confident that they do, at least with some budget-shuffling. “I am sure you can make it work,” I tell them. “It’ll be a gesture of kindness.” I add that I will have an executive order tomorrow afternoon. As Secret Service agents usher them back to the petting zoo, one of them suggests a grand procession of the cake from east to west. “I’ll think on it,” I say, thinking a surprise might be more appropriate.
Moments like that lead me to wonder, as I take to bed, if American statecraft really is my calling. That, too, I can never answer; that is something only Madame History can judge. But she usually sucks.
You're a genius, man.