The president sat in the Oval Office, his back to the windows, his elbows on the desk, his hands the only thing keeping his head from smashing down on the papers in between.
The papers on top showed the latest poll numbers, his lowest ever. Others underneath showed the rising trend of unemployment, of debt on the country’s balance sheet, and of various attacks against him.
Disgusted with the papers below, the president lifted his head, turned to an advisor, and asked if there was any way to make things better. The advisor didn’t respond.
Days went by—then weeks. Everything stayed the same.
Finally, the president realized what to do. Above all, he had a plan. But he wasn’t going to share it with anyone just yet, least of all his good-for-nothing advisors. Besides, he blamed them for creating the mess—or rather for making it worse.
This time, he thought, it was going to be all on him. If things go wrong, he’d pay for it; if right, well then to him would be the glory and his place in history would be secure.
At that thought, the president smiled.
Not long after, he got to work. From friends outside of his administration, the president learned of a solar energy company that had nowhere to go but up.
By acting fast and using those connections, he was able to extract over half a billion dollars from the company’s rise. The administration worked feverishly from that point on, using the money to improve the nation’s balance sheet by the same amount.
It was a small win given the size of the country’s overall debt, but the president knew that pennies make dollars just as streams make rivers. He then set out for another and before long discovered a way not only to achieve a small win but to make the nation safer as well.
The scheme would have to be implemented furiously and fast. It held some danger to boot. But the president thought it worthwhile. Thus, agents of the U.S. government went into Mexico and in a daring operation took back with them an arsenal of weapons from the hands of drug lords and gangsters.
Ultimately, thousands of guns came back, including 34 .50 caliber sniper rifles, approximately the same number that an infantry regiment uses in battle.
While the cash value of those guns did not come close to the 500 plus million dollars returned from the president’s investment in solar energy, it was another small win financially and a big win relative to the government’s function of protecting its citizens.
With that amount of guns taken back, who could tell how many lives were allowed to continue as before, rather than be stopped short by violence. That kind of value couldn’t be measured in dollars, but it was priceless just the same.
Perhaps the president observed this. And perhaps it gave him his next idea, arguably one of his best. Nobody knows. But two facts are incontestable: one, the country was involved in wars unrelated to its own self-interest; and two, the president changed that.
With little debate in Congress, he forthrightly brought the nation’s troops out of one of those wars, a small country in Africa that many Americans probably never even heard of before our troops entered it. Then he did the same thing again, taking our troops out of a small country in the Middle East, where they had been for no stated reason whatsoever.
These were small wins, but they were all starting to add up. Together, they saved hundreds of millions of dollars more, and in addition kept those troops out of harm’s way.
The president, in short, was doing his job, he was doing it masterfully, and with each step he took toward decreasing the nation’s debt and ensuring their safety, people liked him more.
Indeed, as everyone gained more control over their own health care, their own dollars, and thereby their own lives, the president became something of a star. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, appeared on numerous magazine covers, and brought down the house every time he spoke.
Even the media adored him. He was “the smartest president ever.” And the nation, once steeped in cynicism, now dared to hope. The president spoke of change, change that the people could believe in, and oh how everyone believed! There was no reason to doubt, was there?
He was the greatest, the most amazing president of all time. His name, of course, was Barack Obama. And his presidency is truly the most successful in history. You just have to watch it in reverse.
