Ever thought about what you’d do if the office of the president of the United States were dumped in your lap? You have no say about it. Just — bam — you’re suddenly POTUS.
And, no, I don’t mean “Piece Of Twisted Unicorn [Stool].” I mean leader of the free world, commander in chief, the primary occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
One thing is certain. Your life would change — instantly. All sorts of people would be clamoring for you to make a decision, declare a policy, veto a law, or endorse a brand of laundry detergent. It would get crazy fast.
Anyway, so you’re the president. What now? Welfare? Education? Defense? Mandatory national service?
Keep in mind that you can’t just go around doing whatever you want. It may seem like that’s what President Donald Trump is doing — especially if you hate him — but it’s not the way things work at the White House.
There are checks and balances in our system, one of which allows unpopular presidents and rock-throwing, loudmouth a--holes access to food, water, even oxygen.
For this reason, some of your presidential changes would still have to pass congressional muster. That’s why we call our leader a president and not a dictator.
A good example of this would be if I were president and decided that North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, needed to be dead, and that the best way of doing this would be to kill him and everyone else in a three-mile radius of where he happened to be getting his morning ego massage.
Congress almost certainly would impeach me for that. A nuclear strike is an overt act of war that would not go unnoticed by other countries.
Instead, I would task the CIA to fly hair-clipper drones into North Korean airspace and give every dog in the country a butt haircut that looked exactly like the supreme leader. Seriously, we have the technology to do that.
Not only would Kim lose it in five minutes and hang himself, but also this move couldn’t possibly be traced back to me. Even if someone did tie it all together, nobody is crazy enough to go to war over dog-butt haircuts. Except China. And Iran. OK, and maybe California.
What else? Oh, I’d definitely declare an official national cookie (chocolate chip), put Mark Twain’s face on the new four-dollar bill, tax churches, make Sonny secretary of state, and nominate Jay Helton (you don’t know him) of Des Moines, Iowa, as attorney general.
Note: Jay is a lawyer friend, and although he has no experience practicing law on a national level, I don’t see how he could screw it up any worse than the past five attorneys general have.
After lunch, we’d fix the hell out of the national debt, health care and student loans. Then there’s my fabulous emigration policy. Yes, I said emigration. There are loads of people here, including Americans, who need to go somewhere else.
That’s only what I would do. What would you do with all this power we seem to think the president has? It’s trickier than the news media, or the loons in the street, make it sound.