Despite my childhood dreams, I have reached an inevitable conclusion: I could never be President of the United States.
Oh sure, it once seemed like a fun job. I’d see Lyndon Johnson clowning around with his beagles. I could do that. That Nixon fellow could be a bit tricky at times, but I was not above pulling a few pranks myself. Gerald Ford was pleasant and a bit clumsy, and I checked both of those boxes. Jimmy Carter was from the south, liked peanuts, and was a nuclear engineer. I got two out of three on those. I’ll let you guess which two.
So when my teachers said, “Anybody can grow up to be president,” I believed them. Gradually I found out about the perks. We went on a family trip to Washington DC when I was 7. Although our own house was comfortable and cozy, the White House was far more impressive, with plenty of room to play.
I would soon learn about the limo rides, the super-cool Secret Service dudes, and having someone fetch a Coke just by pushing a button on your desk. Nixon could also record conversations by pushing yet another button. I understand that didn’t turn out well.
As groovy as all that appeared, then and now, recent events have convinced me to give up the dream. I’m simply not smart enough.
What we now know is that being president requires you to have the mental capacity and storage space to house a large number of top-secret, classified government documents. I have neither.
When I hear that Presidents Biden and Trump had stashed away these documents in their various homes, offices, think tanks, garages, tree houses, and other hidey holes, I am envious. To think I have lived this long and have only one house with one garage, I realize I don’t have what it takes to lead this nation.
For instance, an office. At work, I have a cubicle. When I once asked for roomier accommodations, I was told the only available space had two stalls.
Think tank? I don’t even have a propane tank. Plus, most of my thinking is done in the shower, and those thoughts are forgotten before I turn the water off.
Apparently to be president in 2023, one must have various homes, located all over the country. The only time I had a second home was when I was trying to sell my previous house when moving into my current one. The pipes kept freezing at the old house, so I marked the price way down and sold it, taking a huge loss. Presidents are surely smarter than that, right?
Speaking of that, Democrats are constantly telling me how dumb Trump is. “He can’t string together two grammatically correct sentences that make sense,” they say. They tell me about the crimes he has committed, and how he will soon be arrested, indicted and jailed.
Well, maybe or maybe not. I do know however, that he must be intellectually curious. Why else would he possess all those documents? I don’t know how he makes time to play golf and entertain famous people at Mar-a-lago while combing through all those hush-hush papers, looking for ways to make America great. (Again.)
And then my Republican friends bend my other ear with tales of Biden’s shortcomings. “He doesn’t know where he is.” “He’s a puppet controlled by evil forces.” “He forgot what he said yesterday.”
Yes, to hear them tell it, the Prez is a senile old buffoon who shouldn’t be given the keys to his Corvette, much less the nuclear codes. But in the next sentence, they’ll tell me that he’s the mastermind behind a “New World Order,” secretly organizing a totalitarian world government. Plus, he’s the leader of his own crime family, making billion-dollar deals with foreign governments.
Well, which is it? Is he a doddering old coot who puts his pants on backwards, or is he an evil genius devising ways to weaken America?
Either way, I could never be president. I wouldn’t know where to store all those classified documents. Heck, I can’t keep up with my Netflix password.
