In America, anyone can grow up to be the President. But why would you want such a dumb job?
To become the President of the United States of America, you have to shake a lot of hands, kiss a number of frequently unattractive babies, and generally subject yourself and everyone you care about to huge amounts of humiliation. It seems reasonable to ask, "Is it worth it?" Here are 15 reasons it decidedly is not
1 There's roughly a one in five chance you will die in office.
43 different men have been President. Eight of them have passed before their terms were completed and a handful more have come close, notably Dwight Eisenhower, who during his eight years as Commander-in-Chief found time for a heart attack, a stroke, and surgery for a bowel obstruction, and Ronald Reagan, whose health problems included an assassination attempt. Which leads us to...
2 There's roughly a one in ten chance you will die in office because someone shot you.
Four Presidents have been gunned down, Reagan was shot and survived, Andrew Jackson had a man twice attempt to shoot him at point-blank range (both guns misfired), and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, while unwounded, saw others killed defending them. Related to that...
3 Life "inside the bubble."
To keep you alive, it takes a whole lot of security. But even if you weren't surrounded by armed guards to prevent all the people who want to kill you from doing so, you'd still be trapped, as you're always hounded by staff who want more of your time than it is mathematically possible for you to give. It's enough to make a person want to leave office. Except...
4. Life "outside the bubble."
Once you leave office, it dawns on you, "The job is special...I'm not." Suddenly you're waiting in traffic and flying commercial (or at least, flying in a private plane much crappier than Air Force One). And dehumanizing as the time in office was, it ensures everything that happens to you for the rest of your life will be utterly anti-climatic by comparison. To recap: you don't enjoy being President, but it ensures you can't enjoy anything else either.
5. It costs 400 million to win a job that pays $400,000.
One of the weirdest parts of being President: you're nominally the most powerful man on Earth, yet you spend MUCH of your time begging for money, meaning the only difference between you and the guy under the bridge is that he gets to drink hobo wine openly.
6. Those Mount Rushmore bastards.
Washington was the Father of Our Nation. Lincoln freed the slaves. Jefferson had the Louisiana Purchase. Even frickin' Teddy Roosevelt, the mountain's weak link, played a vital role in inspecting and regulating our nation's foods and drugs, meaning you owe him thanks every time you bite into a Whopper and don't spit out a finger. You're gonna compete with that?
7. Due to term limits, can't break FDR's record.
You can serve just under ten years if you have the strange luck to be VP and the person in charge is forced out by death or scandal more than halfway through their term, then go on to win two terms of your own, but four elections and 13 years in the White House remain out of reach, no matter how awesomely you wind up presidentin'.
8. If you're a Democrat and things go poorly, cruel comparisons to Jimmy Carter.
You bumbling wimp of a peanut farmer.
9. If you're a Republican and things go poorly, cruel comparisons to Dubya.
You barely literate warmonger whose father will never love you as much as he loves Jeb (oh, wondrous Jeb!).
10. No matter how well you do, 40 percent of the country hates you.
We are a nation where eight out of 10 people have ideological beliefs that transcend all other concerns...and when you appeal to some of them, the rest are instantly alienated and there's no getting around it (ask Obama).
11. The job ages its holders in dog years.
It's a simple pattern: they come into office boyish, they leave broken. Indeed, James Polk was so crushed by the job that he died at 53 just three months after leaving office...and he only served one term.
12. You're facing problems that are, frankly, unsolvable.
Sure, you can totally stimulate the economy and cut taxes and increase defense spending and fix health care and balance the budget all at the same time. And while you're at it, bring back unicorns (they're pretty).
13. Even if you somehow figured out how to solve those problems...
Whether by actively blocking legislation or just adding moron amendments to undermine it completely, congress would not let you do so. And if you somehow did get it past them semi-intact...
14. It would be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
They're appointed for life, meaning they get to mess around with society once in a while just for giggles.
15. Because the moment you're elected, you start running for reelection.
U.S. Presidents are also puppets who have to do what their handlers tell them to do, or they are wiped off the face of the Earth in often umpleasant ways. But no, that doesn't mean I condone what o'bomb'a has done.
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