Dear President Obama,
As is the tradition, a departing President passes on personal pearls of wisdom to an incoming President, through an anguished, manic, handwritten, tear-stained letter.
First of all, the cold faucet in the oval office bathroom is screwed, has too much pressure and without warning sprays water all up the bowl to soak the crotch of your pants. I would have fixed it, but as you know, we were contracted with Halliburton, and Dick Cheney quoted me several hundred million for a new washer.
Don’t use blutack on the Oval Office walls, as the paint will peel and the curator will shit a brick. If you need to hold a flipchart sheet up, an intern will do it, then ask for a reference on how he helped develop your foreign policy. Don’t actually let the intern develop the foreign policy; Tony Blair did that and it was an enormous clusterfuck.
When authorising Black Ops, I find a golf course a bad location, especially when playing against a member or acolyte of the house of Saud. Those guys cannot keep a secret, and in any case, authorising death and destruction even in covert operations can be enough to upset the swing. My advice is to authorise covert operations on Air Force One, in the restroom. I thought long and hard about whether to rename Black Ops in recognition of your proud heritage, but it’s more your battle than mine, so I left that there for ya.
Another thing you’ll want to rename is the square-jawed specimen of All-American jock you have hanging around you with the damn nuclear football all the damned time. His name is David, and he’s fiercely loyal to his country, has no external or foreign interests whatsoever, and his wife is by law required to wear gingham skirts, her hair in a little bob and leave freshly baked apple pies on her window sill every day. David holds the launch codes and the computer thing that I was allowed to look at immediately after 9/11. Actually, don’t rename David, that would be confusing for his friends and family, but you might want to change his intelligence designation (and the designation of those like him) from its current ‘Yankee White’ to something better. I wanted ‘Lone Star’ or ‘Nuclear Ranger’, but it wasn’t to be.
When something terrible happens, like a devastating earthquake, a hurricane like Katrina, or something like 9/11, take some advice from someone who would have done better second time around. Breathe in, breathe out. Find out what actually happened. And then tell someone in the chain of command the following words: “Go down there and do whatever needs to be done to sort this out immediately, and keep me informed.” Do not complete the book you’re reading to the kids, irrespective of how riotous the behaviour of the goat. Incidentally, don’t expect anyone will ever brief you “Mr. President, America is under attack”. What he actually said was “Aw shit, dubya, some serious f**king sh*t just happened and they used a f**king plane”. Don’t accept aid from Iran, Venezuela, Israel or Pakistan.
That’s about it. Other than don’t put coffee cup rings on the Resolute desk, and don’t accidentally kill us all (which I nearly did twice), have a hell of a time. Get a ranch, clear some brush maybe.
Right, I’m off for tater tots and koolaid.
Sincerely,
George W Bush
Former President of the United States
