RERUNS: THE MMTP ARCHIVE

Episode 32: In the Shadow of Olympians

By Lee Molloy

For our reality series Make Me The President, we scoured the country to find the most power-hungry, Machiavellian and downright unattractive people in the United States of America (“The Greatest Nation On Earth” ™) to find the man, or woman, who could raise the most money, be willing to break the most promises and offer the most bland reason to become — The President.

This week on MMTP:

Sen. Barack Obama is taking a vacation with his family and visiting with his grandma — aw, bless him — in Hawaii, and taking the small gamble that, with the Olympics in full force, his rival Sen. John McCain will not be able to come up with any great political coup that will need a personal response. Of course, if McCain does manage to grab a significant amount of news coverage, all Obama has to do is hit the send button on his cell phone to tell all his fans whom his pick for veep will be and every news cycle will again be his. In any event, the bottom line is that this week Obama’s rival for the national spotlight is not John McCain, but Michael Phelps. Go Team USA!

Speaking of the Olympics, current MMTP Champ George Bush has been representin’ over in China and hanging out with our Olympians. Interestingly, he is the first U.S. president ever to attend an Olympic ceremony that was not held in the United States. It’s kind of like he’s taking an end-of-term working vacation. But of course, this being China, the trip has not been without controversy, and the talk soon turned serious with references to illegal prisoners and human rights violations. However, we needn’t worry about a diplomatic incident, because the president made it absolutely clear that he was not there to talk about Gitmo. Probably.

Meanwhile, the big political news is that the fourth-place finisher from last season of MMTP, Sen. John Edwards, has not been able to keep little John in his pants, and has finally admitted to an affair. Now some interesting conspiracy theories have arisen from this event. The first is that if Edwards had admitted to the affair when it was first put out there by the National Enquirer, he might not have siphoned off votes from Sen. Hillary “Remember me?” Clinton in Iowa, and the entire course of the election would have changed, with Clinton going on to win the nomination. At least that’s how Clinton aide Howard Wolfson put it to our friends at ABC News. Of course, another point of view would be that if Wolfson and those in charge of the Clinton campaign had organized their ground troops more effectively in caucus states, Obama might not have won the nomination. However, that would mean taking responsibility for something, right?

Additionally, according to some, there is an even bigger conspiracy being played out by the mainstream media. Yes, the people who believe the moon landing was faked and the Bush administration was responsible for 9/11 now bring you: The media deliberately held back from reporting on the Edwards affair so that Barack Obama would win the Team Democrats nomination. OK, the producers of MMTP have, on occasion, been convinced of a media bias toward Obama, but the idea that the mainstream media were able to concoct a plan to change the outcome of the primary is absurd. Trust us, most journalistic types work for next to nothing because they believe in finding the truth, and would love nothing more than to expose a guy who has been cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. However, the majority of writers would be way too drunk to organize such a phenomenal hoodwinking of the American public.

Tune in next week to find out what the Air Force One fuel bill was for our current MMTP Champ’s vacation to China. 

Hail to the Chief!