Do We Need a President?

Yesterday I received an email from a good friend who was lamenting the fact that it looked like the 2024 election would be between Trump and Joe.

He asked, “Can’t our political system do any better than producing those two old, ineffective and stupid guys?”

So, I started thinking about what my friend said and have actually come up with a rather different and perhaps novel point of view, which is this: What difference does it make who we elect as President of the United States?

And I am asking that question in all seriousness. Because I’m beginning to be convinced that the whole idea of whether the guy/gal who sits behind the Resolute desk is qualified to be sitting there, is an idea that is completely overblown.

Think about this: From 2017 through 2020 we had a President who spent about three hours a day doing nothing other than watching TV, shooting the shit with a drunken, so-called ‘personal’ attorney, and giving a completely untutored son-in-law total and complete authority to run the executive branch.

How could anyone be so stupid as to send Rudy Giuliani all the way to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe and his son? How could anyone have been so stupid as to get on a telephone call which was being listened to by God knows how many people and tell the head of another country that he would trade him guns for personal information about a political foe?

How could anyone be so stupid as to call up the Secretary of State in Pennsylvania and spend an hour begging him to ‘find’ some votes?

And one can make a pretty good case for the possibility that had it not been for a totally unanticipated virus that nobody, including all the scientists at the CDC saw coming in 2020, that we would be sitting here waiting for shithead Trump’s second term to come to an end.

If I hadn’t spent my life in the gun business, which means I had to have almost daily contact with those jerkoffs from the ATF and those nice telephone ladies from the FBI, my entire connection to the federal government would have consisted of exactly five moments over 79 years: when I got my social security number in 1959 or 1960, when I registered for the draft in 1962, when I was inducted into the service in 1968, when I got my first passport in 1970, and when I registered for Medicare in 2009.

Now you can make the argument that I am connected to the Federal Reserve every time I deposit money in a bank account or cash a check – something that dumbass Rand Paul still hasn’t figured out. But that’s not the same thing as actually walking into a government office, taking a number, and waiting to be called.

My point is that I have plenty of dealings with government agencies all the time, but these agencies represent various state and local authorities, even if the money they spend comes from the feds.

The notices about wearing a mask pasted on the front doors of all the mini-marts where I get my morning coffee come from the local health department; the sign telling me not to drive over a certain speed limit is enforced by local or state cops; the school bus which picks up every little brat and prevents me from getting to work on time is paid for by the local school board; and most important, the water I drink from my tap and flush through my toilet comes from a water department staffed and run by the town.

Now granted, if another version of Osama bin Laden were to send over a battalion of armed warriors to assault the United States, that new group of F-35 jets parked at the nearby Barnes Air Force Reserve base better be ready to go. But no other country or terrorist brigade has anything even remotely close to an F-35, okay?

As for all the talk about the ‘ruinous’ 3% inflation and an unemployment rate under 4%, if these numbers portend a great, economic catastrophe, bring it on.

I really believe we should have an age limit on anyone who serves as CEO of the world’s largest corporation, but it should be an age limit which requires that person to be at least eighty years old.

Because the President of the United States should be some old man or woman, preferably with a walker or moving about in a wheelchair, who shows up at various ceremonial events, smiles, cuts a ribbon, poses for a picture, mumbles a few words, then jets back to his temporary residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

That’s what Joe will be doing in Florida today and that’s what he or his successor should be doing every day.