State of the Union -- Advance copy

[Girlieman]

First of all, I want to apologize. I never really wanted to be president, and this whole thing only came about as a result of a wager that I made with Karl Rove one night when we were out drinking. “George,” he said to me, “quit drinking and pretent to get religion, and I'll make you president of the United States.” “Bullocks,” I said, “I've been a miserable failure my whole life, who in his right mind would ever vote for me?” “Trust me,” he said.

But I didn't really want to win that bet, and I did so much to lose it. First, I picked the most mean and ornery person I knew as my running mate. When it looked like the election might actually be close, I told my people to blatantly exclude Blacks from voting in Florida. Heck, that's illegal, and I figured somebody would make a big fuss about it, but nobody seemed to care.

When they started recounting the votes in Florida, I told them to start a lawsuit, claiming that it would violate the people's rights to count all the votes. Heck, this is supposed to be a democracy, and I figured they would laugh me out of the courthouse. But gosh, I won that lawsuit.

Well I didn't really want to be president, and I figured I could find a way to get fired by the people. So I suggested we take all the tax revenue and give it to the richest one hundredth of one percent. Who would stand for that for one minute? Heck, the democrats controlled the Senate, they would never vote for that, right? I was wrong.

Then they tried to tell me there might be a terrorist attack on the country. Great, I thought, I'll let it happen, and they'll run me out of office. Gosh, I even made sure I was reading a book about goats to a bunch of third graders when it happened. But nobody blamed me. And even though I went into hiding, they made me a hero.

By this time I was really getting frustrated. Being President is hard work, and if there's anything I don't like, it's hard work. Even though I made Uncle Dick do all the thinking and what not, I still had to go to a bunch of dinners and wear suits, give speeches and pronounce some really funny last names. So I did some hard thinking of my own, and I said to myself, if there's one thing the American people won't agree to, it's starting a war and invading a country that never did any harm to us. It seemed like a no brainer. Make up a bunch of stuff about how this failed country on the other side of the world was about to attack us, everybody would see through this as utter nonsense, and there would be a public outcry for my resignation.

But that didn't work either.

By now it was time for reelection, and the democrats chose a war hero. Perfect opportunity, I thought. I'll just attack the democratic candidate as a coward and a fake, and since I had gone AWOL during Vietnam, there would be a huge backlash against me, guaranteeing my defeat. But the democratic guy didn't even fight back, and it looked like it would be close again.

Since nobody paid attention to what I did in Florida in 2000, I wanted to make sure everybody could see what I was up to, and I had the Secretary of State in Ohio head my campaign, and the head of the company that made the voting machines promised he would made me win. Hah! I thought, surely they'll get a court order and make the election fair, but nobody did anything.

Look, I'm basically a nice guy, but this was getting me really pissed off. I didn't want to be president, and if I had to suffer, so would you. With enough suffering, I was sure you would do what you had to do to free me from this miserable job. So I started spying on people's phone conversations, and I told them about it. I said I could arrest anybody that I called an enemy combatant, and I said I could invade more countries and that as president I had the power to declare any law unconstitutional and do whatever I wanted. And still, nobody said anything.

After a few years of losing the war in Iraq, the people elected democrats to take control of congress and end the war. I saw this as a good sign, now maybe I would be free. Surely they would use the power given to them by the constitution to remove me from office. But as soon as they were elected, they said that impeachment was off the table. No, I thought to myself, you don't understand! So to show them what a mistake they were making, I insisted that we made the war bigger, and send more troops to Iraq. And they agreed with me.

If there's one thing I know Americans value, it's their jobs. So I pushed through horrible trade policies and made sure that as many jobs were sent overseas as possible, hoping that this would incite some action. But people just borrowed money against their homes. Not to be defeated so easily, I caused oil prices to rise, anything to put people so far in debt they would revolt against me. Now, in my final year in office, now that all of you are deeply in debt, have no medical insurance, losing your homes, can't fill your cars up with gas or heat your homes, I am going to rub salt in your wounds and send each of you a check for a few hundred dollars. Go knock yourselves out. Buy something made in China.

Unhappy with my seven years? Don't blame me, I did everything possible to get fired. I don't know what more I could have done.

I am looking forward to being a private citizen again. In fact, I was just talking to Karl last week, and he said to me “Did you enjoy that last wager? You should see what I have in mind for you next!”