umbros

I never wanted to be President of the United States. It just happened. One day I was an unemployed journalist, deemed no economically viable by the profession that I’d given my all to. The next day I was running for Mayor of my old hometown. Six years later, somehow, I was a senator. 48 years old and not having a clue about anything. I ran on a platform of exactly that. My slogan was taken from one of my favorite movies, “Falling Down”. “You and me, we’re the same.”

I never told anyone that. A reporter from “Rolling Stone” caught on at one point. He asked me about it. I said “Nope. Although, Frederick Forest should have won an Oscar. Best supporting actor.” When I said that, the reporter decided I was fucking with him and left all of it out. Probably for the best, really. At least as far as my political career was concerned.

And that was exactly what I didn’t want. To make it a career. I’d run on a platform of fixing stuff. And at every level I’d done just that. Never fixing as much as I wanted to, but I never stuck around long enough to see it through. They kept pushing me further and further.

The economy never had recovered from what the politicians loved to call “The Great Recession”. I stayed away from that term. I called it a Depression. Why? Because that’s what it was. I refused to make back room deals. At first, my advisors told me it was suicidal. That you had to make “some deals.” But I didn’t. And I kept winning.

As my first term as a freshman Senator was coming to a close, the current President was shot. He died six weeks later. He was about to declare for a re-election campaign, but this kind of put a kink in things. So, a desperate party turned to me.

I remember when the Speaker of the House called me on my phone at home. My old trusty rotary phone. That same “Rolling Stone” guy asked me about the phone in that now-famous interview. He noticed it sitting on a shelf, he said, and didn’t think much of it since I had so much clutter and collectibles everywhere. But then, he said, it rang.

“It’s here to remind me that all that is good, comes to an end,” I said. I made that shit up completely on the spot. But it ended up becoming the lede to his article. And got me noticed. By the young and old alike.

“This guy is a loose cannon,” some said.

“He’s a real innovator,” others pontificated.

“He’ll change things,” still others seemed to believe.

“He’s full of shit,” one blogger noted. Probably more right than wrong.

Two years later, after a campaign where my opponent – Republican nominee Jeb Bush – threw more slings and arrows at me than had ever been thrown in a presidential campaign. At least according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He also spent more money than any candidate ever. I spent as little as I could. I raised money strictly on Kickstater. And raised more than I could ever have spent.

When the results came in on that cold November day, I was sitting in the Three-Legged Dog in New Orleans. I knew I was going to win, I had no doubt, but I was petrified because I had no idea what I was going to do when I got to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In my inauguration speech, I was nervous. But I didn’t let it show. I wrote my own words, and was told many of them were grammatically incorrect and it would show. No one noticed. Except the bloggers.

On my move in day, the next morning, I decided I wasn’t going to live in the White House.

“It just doesn’t fit the model of what I see the President of the United States should do,” I said. “I have decided to let you, the people who elected me, to live here.”

Everyone thought immediately I was insane. And I didn’t argue. I was strange. I didn’t know where Yemen was on a world map – thought I came damn close when I looked at it.

That night, I flew to my hometown of Hopewell, Virginia. I went to  my parents’ house. They were there. Old and retired. And hopefully happy. I could never tell.

But while I was there, I noticed the old stucco house around the block was for rent. It was small, but had a great porch. And a huge back yard that went into the woods. I rented it that moment and it became the White House. For eight years. In that time, over 1,500 folks got to live at the “other” White House as I called it. Me, I spent three nights there total.

Including tonight, my last night in office. I figured it was necessary.

I looked at the photos of those that came before me, and noticed that they were not smiling in their portraits. I made sure I was.

And while nothing really changed in my eight years, I don’t know if anything can without a revolution, I didn’t do any more harm. The only thing I really accomplished was making it no longer a good thing to be a career politician. No more benefits. No more huge salaries.

To quote my second favorite Kevin Costner movie, which I did when the legislation was signed, even though the title of it never actually appeared in the movie: “If you want to be a politician, you better do it for the love of the game, not the perks.”

And I walked out the door, put on my Umbros and played soccer in my front yard.