Exploratory Committee formed!
Fellow Americans. At 2:30 PM EST, my close personal friend and advisor Anselmo BelGrande filed, on my behalf, papers with the Federal Election Commission to establish a presidential exploratory committee. I am perhaps as surprised as anyone to find myself contemplating a bid for the highest office in the land. And let me tell you, should I run and be elected, the first thing I’m going to do is abolish all of this “exploratory committee” business. The paperwork is grueling, I’m told. I was up all night firing people to get the thing to press by noon!
Anyway, I was speaking of my surprise at the thought of running for president. Had someone approached me two years ago and told me I would be forming a committee of this magnitude, I would have laughed. These last few months, however, I have listened to voices of our citizens in towns across this great country of ours, from Alexandria to Manassas, and one thing is clear: the nation is ready for a change. A presidential change, I mean. It’s mandated by the Constitution, you know. Every four years, and all that. And I don’t think Bush is popular enough to win again, so somebody’s going to need to step up, right?
To begin a metaphor which I will clumsily belabor and soon overextend, I feel as if we, the American people, now walk a path between two gleaming rails, extending hither and thither into infinity. Days and nights shrink uneventfully into obscurity, and yet no train ever passes. Nevertheless, we walk, never sure if we are moving toward some great good or to some fearsome evil. Desperately, we hope for a sign, lest we walk further in the wrong direction. Perhaps I am the one to take a knee and press my ear against the cold metal of the tracks in hopes that I might find the way forward.
Did that make any sense? I’m afraid it was unclear, since putting my ear to the tracks wouldn’t help determine which way was forward. And besides, there isn’t really a “forward” on train tracks, since trains go both ways on them. Let me do it over, this time with ships. I have a great one that uses ships, and I’m a sort of astrolabe (these are old ships I’m talking about). Never mind, I’m being told to move on.
Anyway, to put it in very literal terms, I’ve been told by people across this great land (mainly my handlers who follow me everywhere I go to protect me from the public) that I have an excellent chance of winning a presidential election. I want to reiterate, though, that I am not yet actually running for president. I’m only forming an exploratory committee to determine when I should announce my actual candidacy. I’ll be in touch. Power to the people (specifically, me)!