“There are no answers, only mysteries. But I’ll see what I can do.”---Bill Killeen’s Campaign Slogan.
The time has come. It is with great optimism, a measure of determination, a trace of angst, a sprig of parsley, a sniff of nutmeg and a slice of humble pie that today I announce my candidacy for President. That’s right, of the United States. And why not? Everyone’s doing it, about 426 poseurs to date. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s run for Prez.
Why, in this day and age, would anyone want to be President, you ask. Well, that’s easy. You get to live in a big house with no rent, play golf all day and fly gratis to exotic ports of call while reporters on your very own television network draw your bath water and pat you down with talcum powder every morning. What’s to dislike?
Besides, someone has to confront the current President before he sells off all the national parks to Exxon Mobile, appoints The Three Stooges to the Supreme Court and begins lynching Guatemalans at our southern border. I’m not sure any of the current candidates can get the job done. Is this country ready to elect a phony American Indian, a socialist malcontent or a Hoosier mayor with an unpronounceable name to the highest office in the land? I think not. Our voters elect people with nice simple names like Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush, Clinton and Eisenhower. And forget about the skinny kid from Texas. He waves his arms around so much Trump will soon start calling him “The Helicopter” and the voters will collapse in laughter.
I, on the other hand, have a slew of unquestionable assets. I come from a journalistic background and have the finesse to win over a cantankerous press. I have experience in retail business, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, travel and rural psychology. I am incorruptible because I am 78 years old and have no further use for ten million dollars, ritzy yachts or a nutria farm in Bolivia. Not to mention, with President Bill you get free of charge an exceptional First Lady. Siobhan will not be wasting her time with trivial matters like school lunches, bullying or ginning up the Special Olympics, no indeedy. She will be the first U.S. Secretary of Yoga & Meditation. If there’s one thing this country needs. it’s citizens who are more flexible, contemplative and possessed of balanced energy centers. In her spare time, the First Lady, a scientist of some repute, will be working on developing a cure for rap music. That alone should get me the suburban vote.
All Aboard!
While it is customary to conceal cabinet choices until after the election, Candidate Bill feels it is only fair to let the voting public in on his choices beforehand. Therefore, it is with great pride that I nominate Tia Leoni for Secretary of State. After all, she’s doing a great job in the same position on her current television program and has even refurbished the acting career of that guy from Wings. Moreover, CBS has not yet renewed her show for another season, so she could be looking for work.
With the widespread legalization of marijuana expanding daily and so few distinguished politicians remotely familiar with the crop, it stands to reason that an experienced pot farmer like Chuck LeMasters should be Secretary of Agriculture. Chuck would be an atypical choice since he never leaves his woodsy hermitage in Jonesville but sometimes we revolutionary leaders have to make allowances. Funds have been set aside to drastically revamp the nearby Town of Tioga airport to better accommodate visiting farmboys.
The most appropriate contender for Secretary of Defense is obviously the currently-unemployed Arnold Schwarzenegger. One crunching handshake from the cigar-chomping Terminator and potential enemies of the United States would be savvy to the fact that Arnold is not fooling around. I don’t need to tell you that it’s also critical that leaders of the military have a famous signature line. General Douglas MacArthur once promised, “I shall return!” Arnold famously said, “I’ll be baaaack!” Peas in a pod.
Scrooge McDuck, an experienced and wily financier, is the obvious choice for Secretary of the Treasury. McDuck knows money like Trump knows bad ties, even loves the smell of the stuff. Scrooge keeps a money bin in his back yard and in his spare time he burrows through it like a gopher and particularly enjoys throwing it in the air and letting it hit him on the head. He knows how to make it and he knows how to keep it. A natural.
The Secretary of Diversity will be Elton John. It’s about time your government had an agency to cater to all those citizens of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer persuasion, but our Diversity Department will go even further, including fauns, satyrs, centaurs, werewolves, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and folks who eat boogers. Oh sure, there will be some people who object to Elton because he’s not a citizen of the U.S., but this is the Department of Diversity, right?
Finally, your President-to-be is currently in negotiations with a number of wealthy candidates for the Secretary of Health and Human Services job. Admittedly, awarding the position would be a direct trade-off for the contender’s promise to purchase the Fox News Network and transform it into a 24-hour cartoon channel, which is not entirely different from its current programming plan. If that isn’t an aid to health and human services, we don’t know what is.
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| Delaware---not much happening. |
Although the party platform dictates the general direction the President will take once in office, each Chief Executive has his own pet projects to attend to. In my case, I will be a steward of the environment, undoing the harm done by the current administration by reclaiming former federal lands and adding new ones. Not only will your government take back such iconic properties as the ceded half of Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante, we will purchase relatively unused but promising sites like, say, Delaware. There’s not much going on in Delaware these days except for the raising of blue hens and the construction of the world’s tallest LEGO tower (113 feet tall), both of which could be allowed to continue under the auspices of the National Park Service. Tossing a bone to the Native Americans who first settled there, the new name for Delaware would be the Lenni Lenape National Park. It has a nice ring to it.
Next on the takeover agenda would be Montana, a beautiful slice of the country unfortunately peopled by crazed militia bands who meet in desolate deer stands to swap tales of nervy government raiders arriving in black helicopters to seize their AK 47s and fertilizer explosives. Oh, the outrage of it all! It won’t be as cheap as Delaware and we could lose a few National Guardsmen in the foofaraw but it’s past time to put these knuckleheads out to pasture and bring Montana back into the Union. Glacier National Park could keep its title but the rest of Montana would now be Big Sky National Park.
I hate to say it but I don’t have any choice. My next order of business would be the institution of the Brain Police, a select crew of retired college professors and other ex-educators who would fan out to suspect areas of the country to investigate extreme pockets of ignorance. Citizens found wanting would be required to submit to intelligence tests and those failing sent to special schools where ruler-equipped nuns would hold forth. Basic knowledge of civics, media brainwashing techniques and Republican Party dirty tricks would be required for advancement. Students held back more than once would be sent to dusty reservations in Oklahoma.
Since the state of Texas is obviously way too big and takes too long to drive through, the new government will snip off the western third and establish the 51st state, Hispania, where immigrants from Mexico and Central America can flourish without any tsk-tsking from racist buffoons. Spanish will be the official language, of course, and households will be required to employ white maids and nannies. The motto of the new entity will be “Manana!” and the state song will be Yes, We Have No Bananas. Pee Wee Herman, of Mexican/Jewish descent, is odds-on to be elected first governor.
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| President James Polk's Manifest Destiny. |
It’s Upsetting!
I know what you’re all thinking. Bill, there’s no way in the world you can get elected despite your obvious qualifications. You have no political experience, little Democratic Party support and a dubious background full of drugs, shady women and borderline felonies. It’s impossible!
Hmmn. Seems the American electorate has occasionally fallen prey to like candidates, one of whom is roosting in the District of Columbia as we speak. There have been other great surprises in American politics over the years. Henry Clay, a wildly popular Whig Party candidate in 1844, looked like a shoe-in against the Democrat, James K. Polk. A group of Clay’s supporters was so certain of victory they commissioned a set of rosewood furniture for the White House bedroom. Slowly, however, Polk gained attention, thanks to an expansionist platform that supported the annexation of Texas and scathing personal attacks on Clay which branded him as having a weakness for whiskey and poker. Polk also promised he would not seek a second term. He won by a meager 38,000 popular votes and went on to secure a compromise with Britain regarding the Oregon Territory and preside over the Mexican-American War, which resulted in the cession of California and the Southwest to the United States.
The Whigs didn’t give up easily, however. At the end of Polk’s promised one term, they brought back Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and war hero Winfield Scott to challenge Democratic nominee William Cass, an experienced Michigan politician who alienated abolitionists with his support for popular sovereignty---the idea that frontier territories should vote on whether to allow slavery. Zachary Taylor, an afterthought candidate, seemed to have little to offer, being a poorly-educated slaveholder who had never held elective office or even voted in an election. When the battle was over, however, Taylor’s exploits as a general in the Mexican-American War propelled him to the nomination. William Cass was still the favorite in the general election, but then former president Martin Van Buren threw his hat in the ring as the candidate of the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, eventually nabbing some 300,000 votes in November---enough to tip the scales in favor of Taylor, who bested Cass by a margin of 163-127 in the electoral college.
Suddenly, the future seems brighter for upstart candidate Bill. As we all know, however, presidential campaigns are not won by people destitute of funds. Our campaign headquarters will soon be announcing a one-time special offer of aesthetically pleasing Julian Assange dartboards in striking colors to suit any rec room, marked down to $19.95. Because we are not soliciting contributions from large corporate entities, we can only allow 3000 sales to any single customer. Get a few while they last. Julian will be free to sign them in about a decade or so.
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| Future President Bill trying out thrones. |
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
