Wanting to Be President

Harper’s has an excellent, almost ancient piece on its web site consisting of celebrity answers to the question, “When did you stop wanting to be president?”—posed after Nixon’s resignation in 1975. Ronald Reagan has an answer that’s worth reading only because it suggests he did want to be president in those days, even if the main virtue he names for the office is not wanting it; and William Burroughs typed up a dry satirical routine that still works as a lucid warning to anyone seeking the White House now:

My political ambitions were simply of a humbler and less conspicuous caliber. I hoped at one time to become commissioner of sewers for St. Louis County—$300 a month, with the possibility of getting one’s shitty paws deep into a slush fund … I saw myself already in possession of the coveted post, which called for a token appearance twice a week to sign a few letters at the Old Court House; while I’m there might as well put it on the sheriff for some marijuana he has confiscated, and he’d better play ball or I will route a sewer through his front yard. And then across the street to the Court House Café for a coffee with some other lazy bastards in the same line of business, and we wallow in corruption like contented alligators.

[snip]

What would you do if you were in the President’s place? You would be inexorably pressured by the forces and the individuals that made you President, and by your own desire to be President in the first place; so you would wind up doing just what they all have done. It’s enough to stop any sane man from wanting to be President.

     posted 13 April 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. Very good stuff.

    e

    — e    Apr 15, 01:18 pm    #

  2. http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com http://fdherhd.com

    — Alladin    May 14, 09:27 am    #

  Textile Help