The President's Address - Alternative Version

President Obama will address the nation tonight, probably on the debt ceiling negotiations, and so I thought it would be a fun exercise to right up an alternate version of that speech.  It's meant to be light-hearted, so take it as the tongue-in-cheek missive it's intended to be.

My fellow Americans.  I've taken to the bully pulpit tonight to show you who actually wears the big boy pants.  Speaker Boehner has been bullied by the economically illiterate tea party-ers in his midst, and I feel sorry for him.  We played a round of golf together.  We're buddies.  And while I don't believe he got that eagle on the 7th playing gentlemen's rules, I do believe he wanted to do the big thing with this whole debt ceiling/deficit reduction kerfuffle.

I tried to help my boy out.  I took the percentages of cuts to revenues outlined by his office several months ago and offered him a deal built on those percentages.  He couldn't take the deal though.  Eric was all "NO TAXES EVER!!!!!" and the look of resignation on Boehner's face told me nothing was going to get done.

Then Mitch had his cockamamie scheme, where I could ask for an increase in the debt ceiling, ignore the suggested spending cuts that Congress suggested and extend our credit line.  I don't fully understand it.  Where is Orzag to explain this to me?  I miss that guy.  He was such a player, but I digress.

Then the Gang of Six became the Gang of Five, and then they became the Gang of Six again.  I have asked the DC metro police to look into the gang activity going on on Capitol Hill.  They had a plan, it was a pretty good one, and people liked it until people realized it raised more revenue then my plan and then Cantor was prepared to start his own gang and he called Grover, and well, that idea fizzled.

So my fellow Americans, here we are.  The Washington Post has a doomsday debt clock on their main page.  The sky may well be falling.  Why is it falling?  Because Republicans want me to be a one term president.  Mitch told everybody that and if you look at the uniformity with which they have said "NO" to every idea I've mentioned, including the ideas I ripped off from past Republicans, what would certainly seem to be the only goal the Republican party has.

Here I was trying to make history.  I was going to expand healthcare to millions of Americans and Boehner and I could have had our Reagan/O'Neal moment.  But it wasn't to be.  So now John's got a bad idea floating around and Harry has a less bad idea in the other chamber.  I don't really like either idea, but I supposed I'll end up signing a version of the one of the two.  After all, as the guy who is the grown-up in this conversation, I can't let the economic slip into chaos.  But, I want you all to know that this is the Republicans fault.  That passed on history.  A smart young blogger I'd never heard of pushed John to take one for the team, but apparently his Twitter message was lost in the shuffle.

So I stand before you tonight, the adult dealing with the children in Congress.  And to echo some recent polling, only 18% of me approves of Congress too.  We're going to get a deal done, and it's going to suck, and we'll come back to this issue again in 6 to 12 months.  When we do, this will all happen again.  Just remember, it's the other guys' fault.