Talk Thursday: When Next I'm President...

...actually, I should be very careful what I say about that sort of thing. I seem to have the same weird disease as my father has. I call it Civic Responsibility Syndrome. It manifests like this: Every time you join an organization you become President. I watched it happen to my dad over and over again; band boosters, soccer leagues, Kiwanis, model railroaders. In my case I've managed to dodge at the last minute and end up as vice-president, but I gotta tell ya, vice-president of a homeowner's association is not much different than president, particularly when the actual President bails on you, moves to Oregon and leaves you holding the bag two weeks before the termite tenting. Which she scheduled for Easter Weekend. I repeat, Easter Weekend. Only the biggest holiday of the whole year for the 60-some-odd percent of residents in our complex who were Hispanic, and she thought that would be a great weekend to kick them all out of their homes. Thanks, lady. Don't think I've forgotten.

I've also managed to dodge becoming President (or "chair," as it's politely called) of our local OA intergroup. I did it by hastily volunteering for something else. We have a rule that you can only hold one office at a time, so I'm safe for a while. As Bulluck said in "Deadwood," "I said I'd be the building inspector because I didn't want to be the goddamned sheriff!" But I'm on borrowed time here. Sooner or later, people will start looking at me with that godawful smile and say, "Wouldn't she make a great President?"

Eesh.

For this reason, and this reason alone, I never went into politics. But imagine if I had. A bipolar Buddhist blue dog Bachmann clone, making up stuff about the Revolutionary War and insisting that straight people could learn to enjoy gay sex with counseling and enough alcohol. What a fun campaign that would be. And when I won, I'd make my very first phone call to Harvard University, where, probably in a state of mild panic, I'd say, "Send me your very best professors of psychology, philosophy, religion, U.S. history, foreign relations, social psychology and cultural anthropology. No, make that two anthropologists, I want them to argue with each other. And an economist. No, two economist, and make sure only one of them is a Keynesian. Thanks. Oh, and a bottle of anything. And a glazed doughnut. To go." When my illustrious panel arrived, I'd say, "Congratulations, guys (and ladies). You're my new cabinet. Somebody fire the old one. Shouldn't there be a doughnut around here somewhere?"

Because, seriously, a president is only as good as the person he talked to last. Well, at least Clinton was. So I'd like to talk to someone last who actually knew what the fuck he (she) was talking about. I might have a snowball's chance of surviving the first year if I did that. It'd sort of be like an episode of "House." I'd walk into a Cabinet meeting and say, "Al-Qaeda is threatening to harm puppies and say bad things about the nation's children unless we withdraw our big ugly mugs from Libya. What should we do? Discuss!" and then stand back and listen to what everyone has to say. Once everybody's wound down (and I've pried the two anthropologists away from each other's throat, and one of them has managed to get in the last 'Not in my village' and the other one has tossed off a 'Chagnon proved that years ago'"), I'll have some idea of what to do. How anybody runs a country without a Panel of Learned Experts, I have no idea.

Let's see, what else would I do: I'd immediately declassify all the documents about Area 51 and hand them over to WikiLeaks. I'd tell them to make their release look like an accident and make sure my Army chief dude made some loud speeches with some nice big scary words. Then, once the tizzy died down and everybody got over the fact that all we ever did there was make top-secret aircraft and there were never really any alien bodies, I'd radio !X'to on L9 in the M-51 and say, "Okay, they bought it. You owe me 50 quatloos."

I'd close Guantanamo and turn it into a beach. It's in Cuba. It ought to be a beach. As for anybody still there when it closed, I'd get them all jobs at Disney World on the "It's a Small World" ride. That should keep them out of trouble for roughly the rest of their lives.

I'd raise everybody's taxes by the same nominal amount and lower spending across the board by another nominal amount, every year until we had a balanced budget. Then I'd ask what was so hard about this and wait for someone to tell me.

Finally, I'd tell Nancy Grace to shut up. And when she started in on the First Amendment thing, I'd tell her to shut up again.

Unless, of course, that would clinch my re-election. Maybe I'd just tell her to keep it down in there.