King of Infinite Space

I've only been eligible to run for president for three years and I'm already starting to think it wouldn't be a good idea.

I've only really started thinking about it seriously since I rolled over that magic Constitutional age-odometer reading by not dying before I reached 35. Actually I guess that's two prerequisites at once, being 35 years old and not dead. Although the "not dead" part is not spelled out specifically in the Constitution, I think it's been strongly inferred by precedent. The odds that John Kennedy, William McKinley and Abraham Lincoln were all simultaneously fired at the same moment they were shot are so low that they almost don't bear mentioning. But look, I've got blog space to fill, so there, that happened.

This brings me to my first objection: the Secret Service. It's not just that having someone follow me around all the time would be an intrusion on my privacy. I imagine after a while, you just have to become comfortable with the fact that there is a cadre of three or four men who know when you're masturbating. I guess if that idea really bothered me, I wouldn't keep trying my luck against the prudish self-appointed cock police at YouTube.

No, the thing about the Secret Service that disturbs me is that I would need the Secret Service. There's no job I can think of for which I'd have to consider the idea that a team of heavily armed, highly trained commandos would be formed up on me at all times because the threat to my person is just that focused, ubiquitous, clear and present. Only two sorts of people require this level of threat awareness: presidents and Disney princesses. And only the president gets them. Why? Because not being beset by enemies ruins the plot of Sleeping Beauty completely. You know that spinning wheel doesn't get through the first ring of metal detectors.

Secondly, being president means you have to run for president. Have you been watching this shit? Fuck all that noise. Imagine spending twelve months of your life never being allowed to say what you meant, appear flappable, fail to fawn over someone's ugly-ass child, scratch your balls, take bong rips at your nephew's frat party or not smile. Or, alternately, smile too much. All for the unprecedented chance to sit alone in a dark room at the end of the day knowing you have access to devices that could kill most of the people in the world in an instant. And if that isn't enough of a mindfuck, think about it again, but after about 6 months of realizing that about half the population of the world is lined up to call you a baby-killing sellout traitor communist liar dog-fondler. The dangerous part isn't that the power exists, it's the eventual overwhelming temptation to try it out.

Overall, it just seems like such a waste of resources and energy to try to convince a plurality of the people who can be torn away from Us Weekly to give half a fuck in the first place not to vote for the other tongue-less eunuch who's walking around in the same self-selected invisible shackles as you. There's so much more I could do with $400 million dollars of other people's money. I'd pay a lot less in taxes, for a start, that's for sure.

As I watched the last debate, I realized the reason why the process gets so much attention. It's not the civics of it or the simple, quiet patriotism of participation in a representative democracy. No, it's that this is the greatest reality television show in the history of the world. It's not just the best one, it's the prototype, the archetype and the Grand All-Time Champ-een, all rolled into one. It's a series of obstacles and challenges vied for between tribes to see which one gets voted off the island in the last episode, just in time for November sweeps. It's all what reality shows are trying so hard to manufacture, but with ginned-up, candyfloss pathos and bullshit stakes, which (while already suspect, to say the least) seem so stupid by contrast. What would you rather do: talk to Mitt Romney for 90 minutes in front of a studio audience or eat a live spider for a million dollars?

Barack Obama seems up to it (or at least he does now), but remember: he chose to do this too. That motherfucker's crazy.