# A Hypothetical Duck in the White House **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 6, 2004, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524 "2004-04-06T11:41:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/1 "2004-04-06T11:41:58Z")
In the event that an intellectually impaired, emotionally unintelligent and/or criminally corrupt citizen became the President of the United States, what clues would we have? How would we recognize that this is the wrong person in charge? ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/2 "2004-04-06T11:43:05Z")
How do ducks fit into this?? 😕😕 ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/3 "2004-04-06T12:01:30Z")
Bush’s quack musn’t echo, or something. ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/4 "2004-04-06T12:07:41Z")
**Michael Ellis** , I think **Zoe** is referring to the expression “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it’s probably a duck.” What would the quacking of an “intellectually impaired, emotionally unintelligent and/or criminally corrupt citizen” sound like when coming from the White House? (And would it echo, do you suppose?) The question is an interesting hypothetical exercise. If such a person were somehow to become POTUS, how would we know? Would we see, for instance, policy decisions based purely on ideological wishes, with contrary technical information suppressed by political functionaries? Would we see policies which produce enormous financial opportunities for a select few well placed recipients of no-bid government contracts? Would we see stubborn avoidance of accountability for policy results, and a complete inability to admit error? How difficult would it actually be to recognize such a duck? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/5 "2004-04-06T12:15:40Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > Bush’s quack musn’t echo, or something. Hi there, Einstein! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/6 "2004-04-06T12:19:31Z")
[crotchety classroom monitor] Can you two limit your spit-ball fight to one thread at a time, please? [/ccm] ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/7 "2004-04-06T12:28:07Z")
Has anybody tested Bush’s quack to see if it echos? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/8 "2004-04-06T12:32:47Z")
He would lie about a lot of different things, fire people to free up lucrative slots for his cronies, hire private investigators to harass the people he attacked, sell pardons for money, and trash the White House on his way out. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![xenophon41](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xenophon41/32/253_2.png) [@xenophon41](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xenophon41)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/9 "2004-04-06T12:47:06Z")
He’d be able to convince dull-witted ideological mindslaves that his political opponents fired people to free up lucrative slots for cronies, hired private investigators to harass accusers, sold pardons for money and trashed the White House on their way out. ---
**Author:** ![storyteller0910](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@storyteller0910](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/storyteller0910)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/10 "2004-04-06T13:43:23Z")
I predict that a lot of good, intelligent discussion will result from this thread. Oy. ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/11 "2004-04-06T13:57:43Z")
Ducks can’t be elected president. Now, they may stage a coup (or would that be chickens?) and take over, but no matter how much they manipulate the governmental system, there’s no provision in the Constitution for poultry of any kind to form a ruling class. A duckocracy is only a myth. Quack! Quack! The Revolution Comes On Webbed Feet! ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/12 "2004-04-06T13:58:59Z")
I know you said hypothetical, but I’d still like a bit of specificity. Are we talking about a Donald-, a Daffy-, or Scrooge McDuck-type duck? And how does [Ducks Unlimited](http://www.ducksunlimited.org/) figure into this thing? ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/13 "2004-04-06T14:02:49Z")
Quack! ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/14 "2004-04-06T14:06:45Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > In the event that an intellectually impaired, emotionally unintelligent and/or criminally corrupt citizen became the President of the United States, what clues would we have? How would we recognize that this is the wrong person in charge? Well, we have a more informed public, a much more adversarial press, and the Internet to facilitate the spreading of news, it’s doubtful that the coverups of the past would happen today. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and became incapacitated during the last months of 1919. Until he made a semirecovery in the spring of 1920, his wife became the gatekeeper for Wilson, controlling access and making many decisions on her own. That would never happen today. Harding and Grant both presided over spectacularly corrupt adminstrations, although they were never implicated in any wrongdoing themselves. Harding died in office and Grant served two terms as president. Nixon, of course, subverted the democratic process by spying on the opposition. After a year and a half of congressional investigation, Nixon resigned. I have no idea what the OP means by “emotionally unintelligent.” ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/15 "2004-04-06T14:20:15Z")
well, your first clue would be that he was elected as a Democrat… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/16 "2004-04-06T14:45:11Z")
Well, we seem to have established that the duck test’s reputation for cutting away theory and going straight to the empirical may be somewhat exaggerated. Quakko. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/17 "2004-04-06T14:51:23Z")
> [@hawthorne](#): > > Quakko. I think you misspelled “[Quokka](http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~tdp/images/quokka.jpg)”. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Trion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Trion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trion)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/18 "2004-04-06T14:54:29Z")
If we have to put a duck in the White House, I’ll go with the Aflac duck. He may not be much on Foreign Policy, but at least he has something to say about Health Care. Aflac! ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/19 "2004-04-06T14:54:52Z")
Mmm… duck. ---
**Author:** ![5\_time\_champ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/5/278dde/32.png) [@5\_time\_champ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/5_time_champ)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2004, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524/20 "2004-04-06T15:25:36Z")
[Quack, Quack](http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-hypothetical-duck-in-the-white-house/238524.md?page=2)