Candidates: "The worst job I ever had was..."

The candidates for the presidency were asked what the worst job they ever had was.

Mike Huckabee had a job wiping people's fingerprints off the glass doors and windows at Penney's. Hillary Clinton had one of those horrible "gutting fish" jobs in Alaska and got yelled at when she didn't do it fast enough. Mitt Romney was rich, but he cut sewer pipe while summering at a family ranch. (Do you know what that can do to your hair?)

John McCain couldn't remember. Fred Thompson; well, he's an actor, he'll do anything for buck. He was a bouncer at drag strip (what the hell do you have to do to get thrown out of a drag strip?) Bill Richardson got minimum wage to pitch in a no-name baseball league.

Edwards mopped out the grease at a textile mill. Obama hated his job at Baskin Robbins because he ate too much ice cream (can you imagine Obama being eloquent at Baskin Robbins in one of those paper hats?)

But nobody asked "the man" himself, George W. Bush, what his worst job ever was. If he was asked, I think his answer would go...something like this...

The candidates for the presidency were asked what the worst job they ever had was.

Mike Huckabee had a job wiping people's fingerprints off the glass doors and windows at Penney's. Hillary Clinton had one of those horrible "gutting fish" jobs in Alaska and got yelled at when she didn't do it fast enough. Mitt Romney was rich, but he cut sewer pipe while summering at a family ranch. (Do you know what that can do to your hair?)

John McCain couldn't remember. Fred Thompson; well, he's an actor, he'll do anything for buck. He was a bouncer at drag strip (what the hell do you have to do to get thrown out of a drag strip?) Bill Richardson got minimum wage to pitch in a no-name baseball league.

Edwards mopped out the grease at a textile mill. Obama hated his job at Baskin Robbins because he ate too much ice cream (can you imagine Obama being eloquent at Baskin Robbins in one of those paper hats?)

But nobody asked "the man" himself, George W. Bush, what his worst job ever was. If he was asked, I think his answer would go...something like this...

Bush:

Worst job? Definitely President of the United States. See, I’m basically a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. And for years now, everybody’s so serious, “there’s a war on, you can't go around laughin' and smilin' in public, blah, blah, blah.” The year that nine-eleven happened, I got up in public and said "All in all, it's been a great year for Laura and me" and of course the press picked that up, and Dick and Karl said, "Mr. President, you can't say shit like that in public, you can't be actin' all happy when there's three thousand Americans killed and the Pentagon all blown up!" So I had to reign it in. Couldn't be myself.

Being Governor of Texas was great. Governor of Texas doesn't really have to do anything, the State House is where it all happens. And I got to execute people! Al Gonzales got the review time I had to spend on each appeal down to half an hour.

Karla Faye Tucker—that execution made me, careerwise. Folks callin’ in to thank me for havin’ the courage to kill her, sayin’ prayers for me, sendin’ pizzas--God I miss that. Big points for that in the polls, and it was a no-brainer.

Now all I can really do--in public--is the Guantanamo stuff, incarcerating people with no right of appeal, no writ of habeas maximus, or whatever you call it. It’s just not the same.

I mean, I still have the power, the power to kill, the vast...power...of life and death-—but it’s mostly exercised over out-of-state foreigners these days. And that’s not as gratifying. I could kill thousands of innocent foreigners every month and not get the “charge” I got outta killing one Karla Faye Tucker. Cause, you know, she was guilty, and most of these people gettin' killed over in Iraq weren’t. They’re collateral, Karla Faye was—I don’t know, what is the word, “lateral?”

And Karla Faye was an American citizen. The only way I can get Americans killed now is if they volunteer to die for their country, and that strikes me as kind of sad sometimes. Sometimes they don’t die, sometimes they come back missing their legs. I don’t know what happens to the legs, I don’t know whether they ship the legs home, too. I figure it’s insensitive to ask. If I really had to know I could pick up the phone here and someone would tell me in five minutes. But I don’t see how it’s relevant to the question. I really don’t.

And I don’t know why they do it, to tell you the truth. Volunteering for combat, I mean. I could never see any percentage in that, myself. (pause) What was I talking about?

Oh, yeah, worst job. Definitely, being President of the United States. Being in business was a lot better than being President, too. You got to understand, I was in kind of a special situation there—I could fuck up and run the whole business into the ground (I did, too, heh, heh) and everybody would still like me, because I was, you know, politically connected and they were kind of scared of being cut out for bitchin' about me. And *I* made money—the secret is being first to get out before the thing collapses, like they did with Enron.

That’s what I did, and I miss it. People treated me with respect, not like this White House shit. Now people are always criticizing every little thing I say, if I get a name wrong or don’t know where a country is or how Social Security works—that makes the front page of the papers. In business, you can be a real idiot and it never makes the papers unless there’s an actual indictment. And you get all that money.

And you could dream big—when I was in business, people used to kiss my ass all the time, tell me that some day I could be President of the United States. Made me feel good, because I didn’t know what being President was really all about. Now I do, and I realize I had a, a child’s view of what being President of the United States was all about. I thought it was gonna be like Reagan—makin’ jokes, getting your picture taken with folks, being popular, sayin’ “Go ahead, make my day” to Democrats, that kind of stuff. Don't piss off the base by raising taxes on the rich people, get your picture taken, talk about what it means to be a leader--

Turns out that’s only a real small part of the job. That should teach the young people readin’ this interview a valuable lesson—careful what you wish for—you might get it! I thought I wanted to be president. So I went out and got the job, I got the four hundred million bucks together and I got myself the job, I’m President of the United States. And now look what happened. So be careful what you wish for, kids—it might happen!

I started out doin’ that all that Reagan photo-op stuff, but then that nine-eleven thing happened, and people would get all mad if I acted like myself—so Dick and Karl said I had to act all serious after that or they’d quit. Except at GOP events, they said I could cut loose a little at those, cut up a bit. Those people used to like me no matter what I said or did.

But with everybody else—gravitas, Dick said. And it’s been gravitas for six years. Even that thing where I landed the jet on the aircraft carrier—well, I was in the jet—that was a really cool, a lot of good video. But it turned out I shouldn’a told everybody that major combat operations were over—cause as it turned out--they weren’t! Who knew, I sure didn’t. That’s what they told me to say.

But four years later those pictures sure make me look like a smacked ass. Wrecked my gravitas. We had to Photoshop out the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the White House home page. I said, hey, where's the "Mission Accomplished" banner, they said "we Photoshop'd that out, Mr. President." Damn.

Can't say I blame. We stepped in shit that time, doin’ a big national photo op celebrating victory and the end of the war when it turned out it was just starting. Made me look like a smacked ass...still trying to live that down, four years later. Been tryin’ to get my gravitas back ever since. That’s Latin, did you know that? Everbody’s all serious all the time, this Latin shit...

I sure miss business. We had some fun back then. Flyin' a fighter jet when I had a little buzz goin' was pretty cool, too. Not everybody can do it, though. You got to have reflexes that can counter the liquor. Counter the liquor...

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