EDITORIAL

C’mon, Guys! This President Stuff is Hard!

Barack Obama

Okay, so if you want to be technical, I know I haven’t exactly done everything I promised when I was campaigning. The economy’s still pretty shaky, and not every American is quite filled to the brim with the warm glow of hope, but give me a break, will ya? Do you have any idea how hard it is to do all this president stuff?

Like this time a couple months ago, Hillary mentions I’m going to Afghanistan and I’m like: “Shit! Really? I swear nobody tells me about these things! Now I’ve got to go write all this inspirational stuff to tell the troops and have, like, a dozen press conferences, plus pack for freaking Afghanistan!” I mean, it’s a desert, right? But deserts get totally cold at night. Plus, you can’t really wear shorts anyway when you’re president. It’s just really complicated, see?

How am I supposed to be fixing health care or spreading rainbows and puppies or whatever when I’ve always got stuff like that to do and all these meetings to go to and stuff?

I mean, it’s not like I’m not busy; I’m running around all day like a chicken with my head cut off. It’s like, “Mr. President, call from the Singaporean Prime Minister … Mr. President, read this security brief … Mr. President, you left your burrito in the microwave … Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President!” Geez, give me a minute! Maybe if I could just sit down for a sec, I’d figure out how to handle the whole thing with the gays progressively and tactfully.

See, I said I'd work on a lot of stuff like that, but what you have to understand is that campaigning is easy. People really love to hear me tell them stuff like “I am an ardent believer in the free market,” “Americans ... still believe in an America where anything’s possible,” and “Your sins are forgiven.”

But it’s actually way harder to do that kind of stuff than you’d think. You try to do things that some people want, and then that’s exactly what other people don’t want, but if you don’t do anything, both sides end up hating you. Did you know there are single-issue voters on both sides of the abortion debate?

And then there’s the foreigners. Obviously, as president, I have to meet lots of people from lots of other countries, but they all speak different languages! I mean, I guess I always knew that, I just never really thought about it, you know? I mean, English and Indonesian always worked for me until now. Oy vey!

The government has lots of translators, of course, but it’s not the same. Foreign leaders are understandably a little touchy about stuff like nuclear weapons and genocide. Can you imagine having this random lady sitting there too, passing back and forth all these messages that aren’t even her business? Awkward!

And speaking of foreign countries, there’s all this super complicated stuff in the Middle East. Like Israel and Palestine. You’ve probably had this happen: you’re friends with this one guy, but you don’t want to be a jerk to this other guy, but they totally hate each other? Double awkward!

Anyway, you get the idea. It’s not as easy as it sounds to just “recover the economy” or “balance the budget” or “make it to your flute recital,” so just cut me some slack, alright? It’s only been a year and some change. I’ll get it done, I swear to Allah!

Shit.