I would be the hermit president who hates public speaking and spends almost every day in the Oval Office “working from home” in front of a laptop. I would only ever travel for absolutely needed events. I would type up all my own blog posts on the official White House website and Facebook. Each speech I gave would be just 10-15 minutes long. I would insist the White House staff put foaming hand soap in all the restrooms and use natural laundry detergent. I would also sleep at 3 AM and not wake up til 10 AM.
I would be the compassionate President. I’d be reforming immigration policies to have a guest worker program and a path to citizenship. I’d be making new national parks and preserving federal lands. Healthcare would become a right and free to anyone who needed. I’d fight to do away with the electoral college and the right to vote. And then on the second day . . .
Well, as the first female president, I suppose my image would naturally be evaluated as “woke bitch who stole the election”.
As the first anarchist president, who ran on the slogan “No Masters, No Bosses,” I would immediately resign and encourage others to do the same. I might give everyone in the country a harmonica, but would feel conflicted about this flagrant abuse of power.
Put that on a t-shirt and roll with it.
I’d be a terrible president. I don’t like bullshitters, and being president involves dealing with bullshitters 24/7.
I’d enshrine the Constitutions’ preamble as the mission statement of the government. Then I’d appoint experts in their fields and expect them to act with professional demeanor.
Oh yeah, and I’d have my cat in the oval office.
Acerbic.
There’d be a lot of, “well what did you think was going to happen, Florida?”
At my first official state dinner we will be serving fresh sliced tomatoes, boiled cabbage, beans, choice of tortilla or cornbread, apple slices, and iced tea. Of course, the menu will be reviewed by an expert from the Department of Agriculture to ensure that it is a nutritionally complete and healthy meal. If anyone complains I will say, “If it’s good enough for the poor people then it’s good enough for the White House.”
Satanic, but fair.
My lovely wife will be known as First Dyke.
Probably that I’m extremely ineffective in building consensus for domestic changes. Acerbic to the press, antagonistic to the GOP’s bad faith in public. Also that I’m forceful wrt Ukraine, sending 1000 Bradleys and removing restrictions on attacks inside Russia.
I think, realistically, I would last a few months at most. My utter incompetency in dealing with human beings and/or convincing them to do what I want them to do would quickly cause a major crisis and/or cause me to resign in frustration.
“Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is no way to go through your term, son.”
Well, two out of the three, at least.
Thanks for the opportunity, I’ve wanted to say this for a while:
I’d get rid of every trapping of pomp and dignity. The actual dignity of the office has been thoroughly destroyed, of course, so we should stop pretending there’s anything grand and noble going on. There’s a remnant of public sentiment that The President Is A Great and Good Man, He Must Be Because He Is The President. This has to be utterly stamped out. It’s nothing but a fig leaf for the most venal and ugly criminality at this point.
The White House should be closed for a good long while, and later converted to a museum. The president should live in a big-enough-but-humble apartment, surrounded by other apartments for the necessary staff and security.
There should be no paintings of Founders, no busts, no gifts, no Resolute Desk, no Presidential Seal, no occasions of ceremony and grandeur. No State dinners. No formal diplomacy beyond minimum courtesies to other heads of state. No command performances. No historic anything (except in the White House Museum), nothing to make the public believe that the Presidency is somehow an office of special grace and nobility. It is not, so have the President look like the humble civil servant that he or she ought to be. Strip it all down to the barest bones permitted by the Constitution.
(ETA: this is not quite the question that was asked, but the result of all this would mean my reputation would probably be that of a destroyer of legacy. Good.)
The problem is, as we’ve seen with Obama-Trump-Biden-Trump, any changes you might try to make would just be up-ended by the next person in office. “State Dinners are back on the menu, boys!”
Prior to 2024 I would be known as the smart president. I would be fully conversant on any subject. I would be like Obama, but even better. I would craft policies that would make everyone better off.
Now? I’d be know as the president that formally outlawed the republican party, put the former administration officials in public stocks on the Mall. And supply free tomatoes. I’d create realistic immigration reform, beginning with deporting every ICEstapo agent to Eswatini and dump them buck naked onto the ground. I would fully fund the arts and national parks in perpetuity.
You lost me at “Facebook.”
Agree, I’d also like to see much of the performative, symbolic stuff go away.
I won’t entertain the possibility of me being president, even in a hypothetical. But I will say I’d love to see a policy wonk president. One who is completely un-photogenic and spends their time deeply studying issues.
I would be known as the president who doesn’t know Jack Shit about politics, but in a benign way. I would try not to offend anyone and of, course, fail miserably.
I would be the president who kept pointing out that abandoning reconstruction was the nation’s biggest mistake, that racial resentment was baked into our culture to justify the evils of slavery and our racial resentment was the biggest threat to democracy and civilization we faced because all the unresolved racial resentment we have due to slavery is what feeds into fascism and plutocracy, which makes life miserable in America for endless people. I’d do that instead of golfing.
I’d also be known for run on sentences.