Early this morning, on January 20, 2009, inauguration day, President-elect Barack Obama awoke in a cold sweat. Rolling over at the sound of his whimpering, his wife, Michelle, ran a hand through Barack’s hair. “What’s wrong, my little ruler of the free world?” she said, “Did you have another one of those dreams where Hilary Clinton turns into a zombie and chases you off a cliff?”
Barack shook his head, turned his glazed eyes down, and pulled his blanket over his face. “No, no, it’s worse. It’s even worse than the ones where McCain figures out how to lift his arms over his shoulders and body slams me during the State of the Union. It was insane. Congress…it, it went mad! I mean, I fell down this rabbit hole, and I landed in this strange room. It looked just like the floor of the House. There was this crying clown at the podium, and all these wild creatures sitting in the pews! There were all these people in colonial clothing holding these strange signs, and bowing to statues of Ronald Reagan! And then they started passing all these strange bills, and cutting funding with some strange thing called the ‘Semester,’ and… and then they shut down the government! It was insane!”
Seeing her husband spinning into a frenzy, Michelle laid a hand on his shoulder. “Relax, Barry. Relax. You won’t let that happen. Everyone loves you, and everyone knows you just want to make some positive change. I mean, come on, there’s conservative people, but America is all about compromise, right?”
Barack dropped his head to his knees. “But that’s the worst part.” he sobbed, “I tried to slow things down, I talked all calmly, and I started mentioning things like reforming our healthcare system and offering women equal pay. But they went insane! They all held up their birth certificates and starting pointing and screaming ‘Socialist!’ at me – right there on the floor of the House! And then suddenly all the rules in the Senate went haywire; we had a majority on all these bills, but Rand Paul just went on talking and talking forever and we couldn’t even start a debate!”
Rubbing his back, Michelle consoled her husband. “Easy, easy. It’s gonna be okay. It was all just a dream, honey. It was just a bad dream. I promise.”
