I want to be president. After all, there’s money to be made, lots of it.
Prior to the recurrent guy I never wanted to be president. Why, I would ask anyone willing to listen, would you want to take on such an awful job? So much responsibility, so many decisions to be made, so many people depending on you for their lives, liberties and happiness, and so many terribly long hours with rarely a weekend off. It was always such a thankless job, too. No matter what you did you would anger nearly half the voting public. Yes, there was always the promise of great power placed in your hands, power for good, to benefit those you serve, and power to wage war against those within and without the country.
But now I can see that I misread the whole thing. So, yes, I want to be president and have already begun working on my campaign. After all, it’s clear from the recurrent guy that there’s enormous money to be made if you’re willing to break laws, blackmail elected members of Congress, and threaten anyone else who gets in your way.
And this goes far beyond our worst presidents of the past. Even Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon, forced to resign as president by his own party members long ago in the distant 70s, didn’t manage to amass the fortune that he could have had he known how.
Just think of the riches that could be coming your way. A ballroom with your name attached to replace the old-fashioned East Wing of the White House for the measly price tag of $1 billion? That’s nothing compared to the billions of dollars rolling in from the high tech corporate buddies of the recurrent guy. They seem to be happy to bankroll anything he asks for, such as the largest outside-funded primary elections in political history. And nobody needs to know where the money comes from since the Supreme Court majority decided that corporations are free to donate all they want as long it doesn’t go directly to a particular campaign. And anonymously too! Isn’t that great!
I’m lining up my oligarchs as I type this. And then there’s the $1.776 billion fund that the not-very-independent Department of Justice just created out of whole cloth to pay the recurrent guy after he sued his own IRS and then dropped the case. I love that! Sue yourself! See where that gets you. Well, in this case, it got him a lot of taxpayer funds to do with as he pleases, such as to pay off those insurrectionists who stormed our Capitol building seeking to hang some elected people the recurrent guy was annoyed with.
Maybe they’ll show up again when he makes the call to inflict more violence against those he disagrees with. After all, there’s money to be made and pardons to be had when the person in charge is your dear leader and willing to make payments. Hmm, can you be pardoned more than once? I’ll ask my soon to be friends on the Supreme Court what they recommend.
Just think of it. Spend your weekends off playing golf in Florida or New Jersey and your days signing executive orders that the recurrent guy thinks have the force of law. And of course it won’t matter anyway as you will have the power to ignore any push back from the courts. Paint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial your favorite color, electric blue? And it’s only going to cost taxpayers $20 million! And, then you can pick your best friend or your brother, who cares, to do the work, no more independent competitive bidding process!
This is just so exciting, I can’t tell you. Oh wait, I almost forgot, there’s the insider trading angle. You see, as president all manner of financial markets are hanging on your every word since what you say could potentially tank or lift those markets. Gee, you could start a war, then tease that you’re going to bomb the target country out of existence. But then the next day you announce that, oh my goodness, we have a ceasefire! But before your big announcement you buy and sell stocks. Now you just sit back and watch the value of your investments skyrocket while every other investor watches theirs plummet.
Oh, yes, I want to be president! Up until now I thought I was happily retired, done with working. But, now that I know you can get a job where you work very little while at the same time defraud, swindle and scam the country, I’m ready to apply. Wouldn’t you be? So please, when you receive my emails asking for donations to my campaign, I hope you’ll decide to back my run for president. And, of course, you’ll receive handsome payments should I make it into the Oval.
Karen Gardner of Haydenville can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.