You could blame "political correctness" for the disaster which nearly bankrupt the country.

It would have been too easy to simply blame an earlier administration - but it has been building up because of both parties and numerous Presendents.

Let me insert my usual disclaimer that this is really just a memoir of a very short and unique Presidency by an un-elected citizen. And since I'm now an "Ex", it's too easy to say I'm just a senile old fool.

That's why I can get away with this memoir. Both main parties disowned me, as well as most of the smaller parties (can we again say minority here?)

This disaster had been a long time building, as I said.

While the Republican's weren't blameless by any means, the Democrats had gone after a "majority of minorities" as a way to win elections. Not bad, but this really divided the country.

When you break down statistics (caveat: remember "Lies, Damned lies, and statistics"?) you actually see that the nation is built of minorities, including the white (non-colored) working male part - which included me.

(Let's "sidebar" here: If "people of color" are "black" this also means you could call whites "non-colored" - I don't think anyone should object, as much blame as some in the media heap on "whites" for the wrong reasons.)

So it means that both Left and Right assemble various minority groups - niches, to use a marketing term - in order to secure elections. You can't count on the Non-colored to vote one way any more than you can count on the Colored ("people of color" to vote one way. Your Queer ("LGBT") vote no more uniform than the Latino ("people of partial color") were.

Politicians then had to appeal to various minorities with various promises which were impossible to keep. (Oh, and that's a big surprise?) Democrats had a problem in that church going "blacks" hated "gay marriage", for instance. If they want to encourage Hispanic ("slightly colored") votes, the encouraged legalizing illegal immigration (formerly known as "wetbacks") which then took jobs away from blacks.

What a scene.

Republicans were afraid of the press, because they would all jump on a story (even if false) and then repeat that story on later stories - until it became Gospel truth (aka: urban legend.)

So the whole deal was to break apart the coalition of minorities of the other guy's party.

The way to keep your minorities on your side was to pander to them, by apologizing for the slightest discomfort anything you said or did (if imaginary) to them. Political Correctness and stupidity ruled.

This led us all to a national financial breakdown, narrowly averted.

One urban legend got started some time after I got into office that the Republicans were going to shut down the banking system - which of course started a run on the banks. The FDIC tried to get in front of it, only to be called a "front group" for the One-Percenters. Some simple sleuthing by my staff showed that this turned out to be someone's gambit to get the Democrats back in charge after my term was over.

The damage had been done, though. Without a steady flow of money, banks weren't able to make loans, and so businesses started to fail. So more people went out of work - and had to spend what they had left. You could see that if this weren't stopped quickly, there would be another Recession going on.

So I went on the radio and gave them all hell. Did that for several weeks. My typical "political-correctness-be-damned approach."

My general approach was to compare the Media to a pack of asinine hyenas who bayed at the moon for waking them up at night. And then I labelled anyone who listened to the media as "blindly going from one ditch to the other down the street, with manure-covered feet."

(Media didn't like that one bit, as soon as they looked up what "manure" was. Then they realized hyena's were colored - we countered with "mix-parentage"; they said the quote was from the Bible - and we punted back that a similar phrase was in both the Old Testament and the Koran - so which religion were they persecuting? That shut them up a little bit - being anti-Semitic was one thing, but you didn't want a Jihad going after your New York or L.A. media offices...)

My staff also took a comment I made about how people would soon be burying their money in their back and front yards - and started running a Twitter campaign with photoshopped holes in the White House lawn. People loved this and started adding to the scene, posting any image of any city excavation job as a way to find income for city budgets. (Unfortunately, they also started calling them #obamaholes or #o-holes...)

After that campaign backfired, then people put their money back into the banks (especially after a few well-publicized home invasions in cities where they weren't allowed to have guns. Texas had a few of these as well, but the burglars weren't very successful - they arrested the ones which survived.)

With regular cash flow going again, banks were able to lend money and the nation got going again.

And both main political parties went back to figuring out how to get their guy elected next.

I continued to insist that I wasn't going to run for re-election and I wasn't going to recommend any candidate.

And I was shown on national TV playing horseshoes in the White House back yard (with no holes in it, BTW.)

That seemed to calm down the scene. The Media won't follow boring.

(Photo: "Tax Credits")

Constitutional Crisis Averted. 

Cracker-barrel Humorist Takes Office.

(Photo: Alejandro Meteos)

No one was hurt in this process - the ASPCA was happy with how the pets were treated. But the nation had an wake-up moment.

The Vice President had been making inane goofs for years. Mis-speaking, etc. Really embarrassing gaffes at times. Some just quietly referred to his being an "old white guy."

It was in his medical checkups which lead to some problems. Seems he had something going on with his brain that wasn't normal Some said it was too many years in the Senate, which had done that to a few people. The bottom line is that he was getting more demented all the time. Meanwhile, he was going to get worse at embarrassing people and himself - and the Administration.

So he resigned "to spend more time with his family."

How I got here.

Kind of a funny story. You see, I've never even campaigned for a job. The most public post I ever did was a junior member of a local water board in a rural county. Otherwise, I kept mostly to the farm and out of politics. Other than cussing their stupidity when I listened to what passes for "news", I kept pretty quiet.

It was the Governor who set me up. Seems a representative quit (signed up with a Washington lobbyist firm) and my name came up as an "Independent" who could fill the shoes for the rest of that term. So there I was, a greenhorn in Washington, nearly as naive as Jimmy Stewart's character.

When the VP had to be replaced, someone came up with this great idea to put me in there.

You see, I have this great habit of responding to the press with quotes from midwestern humorists like Mark Twain and Will Rogers - sometimes even Ben Franklin. The press loved this. And they'd seek me out for interviews and talk shows to "add color" to the normal old white guy talking heads.

Afterall, it was only going to be the last two years of a term - what could happen?

My rise to popular fame.

And then I found Twitter and my staff started sending out tweets with these types of quote in them. They set up a Facebook page and had fun with this. (I swear I didn't have anything to do with these. Really.) That made me even more popular. Rogers and Twain and Franklin had some really pithy things to say at times. All I had to do was sit and do my reading, plus sign some papers and do some voting.

You see, I was just there to hold the spot until the next election. I didn't have any concerns about "leaving a legacy" or anything. Just represent the people in my little gerrymandered district, and vote the way I think they thought.

But the media loved me. Because I quoted others people and made politics interesting. Particularly after the big speeches.

So, being an Independent and loved by the media (and the Twitterverse) - I was someone's great choice to fill out the VP's shoes for the last couple of years of this presidency. It would make people love the President and his decisions, I was told. (I had my doubts, but just gave another pithy quote as a reply - which make the news.)

Filling some big shoes

I had just started settling into the schedule of meeting and greeting, and spent my spare time boning up on my reading - and then the "crisis" happened.

Someone found (hacked) their way into all these emails between the President and a huge amount of others. Then they dumped them on the Internet, duplicating them on all sorts of foreign sites so they couldn't be taken down.

Turns out there were more than a few skeletons besides Solyndra, Fast and Furious, Immigration, secret negotiations with rogue nations, etc.  Quite a few more.

Yes, they're still looking for the guy (or gal) and plan to extradite him to an unknown prison. But the horses were out of the barn, so the doors could fall off for all anyone cared about that barn anymore.

And the only unelected President in history took office. Which someone said was a crisis on its own.

Since I was an "Independent" - I took the obvious logical step first. I told everyone I wasn't running for re-election, that fixing this mess was more than enough work for me. I laid it all out in a memorandum and sent it to all the media. (Drudge got his copy first, though.)

I just let everyone squabble over what they wanted to do. I had a lot of mess to sort out. Lots of mess.

First steps.

Well, I gave the former President an amnesty, whether he wanted it or not. He certainly didn't ask for it. He was busy vacationing in Norway while it all settled down. Figured they'd love him there for his Nobel Prize and was too far away for the media to hound him (although they gave it a try.) We talked on the phone a couple of times, but he was pretty miffed about his legacy being ruined before his eyes.

Next was simply suspending all his executive orders and memoranda pending review. Because some of those emails pointed out that he hadn't been exactly truthful about his background - and might not have actually be qualified to be elected for the job. So I gave all the legal guys some room to move - and meanwhile, took out a lot of these quibbles which were happening all around.

I started giving some Saturday talks which were simply fun - optimistic and upbest. "America's best days are ahead", was the theme. Then both parties and any one with a dog in the fight could give a response.

Seemed fair. I had a job to do in cleaning everything up. People could do what they wanted.

So that's how I got there.