Imagine if
you could ask a presidential candidate just one question.
To make it
more interesting, let’s stipulate that before the candidate could answer, he
would have to accept an injection of truth serum. For the first time, the candidate would say
out loud what he is privately thinking.
Allow me to
share with you my question to President Obama, and what I believe would be his
response.
Question: “Mr.
President, you have correctly accused your opponent of advocating policies that
would most immediately benefit the very wealthy, and—also correctly—noted that
these policies would resurrect the failed approach of George W. Bush.”
“But, Mr.
President, over the past four years you yourself have continued the Bush-era
tax cuts for all Americans, including the very wealthy. If re-elected, you vow to maintain the tax
cuts for individuals earning $250,000 a year or less, but will allow the tax
rates of those above that income level to revert to what they were during the
Clinton years.”
“Yet, all
that means is that the very richest Americans will only experience a meager
four percent tax increase, while people earning as much as a quarter million
dollars a year will continue to enjoy their tax cut. As a matter of arithmetic, this means that in
order to reduce the federal deficit you will have to cut programs vital to the
middle class and poor, including for example, nutrition programs for poor
children.”
“So, my
question to you is this: why do you want to help an individual earning $250,000 to upgrade from a Mercedes to a Bentley,
while forcing poor children to downgrade to a diet of Ramon noodles and Wonder
Bread?”
Answer:
“Look, Professor Kirby, I may be on truth serum, but what are YOU
on? You talk like you’ve been hanging
out too much with your aging-hippy liberal friends, smoking weed and listening
to the Dead and reminiscing about life back in the day. Listen, it’s time to put away the tie-died
tee-shirts and grow up.”
“Those of us
that think like adults notice certain facts that you and your commie academic eat-the-rich
whining friends refuse to recognize. The
fact is, those people earning $250,000 write checks to campaigns and Super
PACs. And people who earn more than
$250,000 are worse: They belong to organizations like the Chamber of Commerce
and the Business Round Table that, collectively, are spending hundreds of
millions of dollars to elect my opponent.”
“Look professor” [said with a sneer] “if you
think MY policies favor the rich, wait till Romney adds the White House to his
long list of homes. The moment his
butler settles him in, the first thing he will do is pull out his gold pen and
start policies that will put you and your bong-toting friends in jail. Your grandmother will be ground into soylent
green. There’ll be an oil-drilling rig
in every backyard. The forty-seven
percent will have to sell body parts to the rich for food. Guns will be issued to every child (or at
least every child born to a middle class white protestant Christian family with
a ‘Support the Troops’ bumper sticker on their SUV.) (Oh, and by ‘middle class’ I mean, as Romney
said, people who earn between $200,000 and $250,000 a year.). And, finally, the thing that will REALLY hurt
those of you sitting around the faculty lounge:
sixties acid rock will be outlawed; you have to listen to Pat Boone.”
Conclusion:
Move to Canada…
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