From the WSJ Opinion Archives
WRITTEN ON WATER
Memos From POTUS
Retrieved from the Senate day-care center bean bag.
From: POTUS, MSPOTUS
To: Hon. Janet Reno, Hon. Barney Frank, Hon. Bob "Miracle Baby" Torricelli.
Note: Everything we did, we did for the children.
Note 2, to Sen. Torricelli: Not the bean bag, the burn bag. If you put it in the burn bag, Bob, it gets burned up. If you put it in the bean bag, as you have done now for the past six times despite our last six notes to you, it may fall into the hands of a right-wing zealot. Look, having surpassed in early genius even Mozart and John Stuart Mill, can't you get this straight? Surely a newborn who can deconstruct the subtle anti-Italian subtext of the Kefauver hearings can figure out the difference between a burn bag and a bean bag. Remember, Bob, this is about politics, and as MSPOTUS once said, "Politics ain't bean bag." Don't put it there. Thurmond takes it out and gives it to Jesse Helms. Jesse Helms is a right-wing extremist, and he gives it to the W--l S----t J-----l. OK?
Subject: Here is the memo we discussed. Bob, it was a good idea you had to leave it in the seat cushions of the couch in POTUS's private study, but what if VPOTUS wants to have them cleaned? We've decided to leave it taped to the inside wall of the refrigerator in the private quarters. Whenever VPOTUS is here he opens that refrigerator compulsively, because sometime in the first term he found a Clark Bar there. We think this has affected his mind. Even though we don't have any Clark Bars in there anymore, (it was a leftover from Jerry Ford) when VPOTUS is here he opens the refrigerator door so many times it makes a breeze. (We told him that he was stupid to eat a Republican candy bar.) Here's the memorandum. Thanks for your input.
They say we did something bad.Each one of these cycles, with the use of weekends, holidays, and travel (which saved us) is good for at least a year of delay. And you can go through a cycle half a dozen times before anyone notices. The great thing is that in between cycles, just like the pauses when a washing machine mysteriously does nothing (is it resting, undecided?), you can get the attorney general to distract your accusers with her wondrous stare. She went to hypnotism school somewhere in South America, you know, and she's totally in our corner.
We say: No we didn't.
They say we did.
We say: You have no evidence.
They show evidence.
We say: The evidence is immaterial.
They demonstrate the connection.
We say: Still, it's no proof.
They prove it.
We say: This law does not apply to us.
They show that it does apply to us.
We say: We didn't know that it applies to us.
They show that we did know that it applies to us.
We say: This law doesn't mean what it says.
They show that it does mean what it says.
We say: This law shouldn't apply to anybody.
They show that it should apply to everybody.
We say: The law is unfair, let's change it.
They say that, nonetheless, we broke it.
We say: No we didn't.
They say we did.
We say: You have no evidence, etc. etc., ad infinitum, in circularis.
Learn her ways. She communicates with utter perfection the sense that she is astonished by the stupidity and baselessness of any allegation--any allegation. You see, the right-wing extremists think she's talking to them when she goes to their yucky hearings. At first she was, until POTUS explained to her that she should really be talking to all the people who would see it on TV. Her standard projection (learn it): "I have to be polite to all you right-wing extremists because not only am I polite and innocent by nature, but you were put in positions of power by the United Fruit Company and there's nothing I can do about it. But what, in God's name, are you trying to say? I'll sit here, because I'm nice, but if you think you can get anything out of me, stick it."
Remember, we're Democrats and they're right-wing extremists. Think of all the positions they take that are exactly the opposite of ours! Boy, are they extreme. And don't forget that physics are not the same for us as for them. Remember Barney? Running interference and calling "Point of order! Point of order!" just like J-e M------y, and not a peep from the press? Never, never forget. We can do things they can't. Can you imagine where Denny Hastert would be now if a prostitution ring had been run out of his apartment? Can you imagine a prostitution ring being run out of Denny Hastert's apartment? Can you imagine Denny Hastert's apartment?
We know that once you get to be POTUS you'll want to treat us like dirt. I mean, how did we treat you? That's OK, but not if you want our advice, and not if you want us to keep quiet. Which means that when MSPOTUS is in the Senate and POTUS is at the studio, both of us get instant accommodation. If MSPOTUS needs the embassy in Armenia turned upside down, you turn it upside down. If POTUS wants a research tax credit for Smellavision, you squeeze it from the extremists even if you have to trade off an endangered species or two. After you serve your two terms, MSPOTUS, when she's POTUS, will do the same for you and the current MSVPOTUS. Chelsea will do the same for VPOTUSJR, and on into the next millennium. We can do it, all of it, because God is willing for us to transgress from time to time. He knows that we do it to help people, whereas they do it to harm people. That's why we had to cross the line to get here, to stay here, and to protect ourselves from the vicious reactions against the few transgressions to which we were compelled so as to advance the cause of goodness.
For this we owe our supporters a great deal, from the lowliest Marin County peasant whom we elevated into a life of meaning, to the richest mogul whom we convinced to betray his class, to loyal senators like Miracle Baby Torricelli, and those in the press who never stopped adoring us. History will show that our accomplishments would not have been possible without them. And you, too, VPOTUS. You've been a good student, you've got all this stuff in your heart, and even if you wanted to walk away from it, well, you really couldn't, could you?
Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. His column appears Tuesdays.
