The Real Barack

The conventions are finally over. Mitt Romney reintroduced himself to the American people as a man with business smarts, principles, and experience turning around failing organizations. The Democratic party responded by attacking Mitt Romney and generally avoiding any discussion of the past four years. As a result, I’d like to provide a Brooks-esque reintroduction to our President, a man with an always shifting and mysterious background, so that the American people can make a fully informed decision on Nov. 6th. Fortunately, I have spent four years researching the inscrutable man in the White House and can now provide you with unique insight into the newly revised campaign biography.

The man himself.

Barack Obama was born on August 4^th, 1961 in Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya, depending on whether he was applying for President of the United States, a college scholarship for international students, or for a book deal about his struggle with his racial identity. He burst forth from his mother’s womb in a cloud of smoke, which may or may not have been related to the half-empty pack of cigarettes the future President clutched tightly in his left hand. After being named for his Russian-speaking Marxist anti-colonialist father, the nurses turned away for a second during which time the precocious young man had already rolled his birth certificate into a fat joint and lit it on fire. This daring act of rebellion would later result in some trouble for Barack – or Barry as he preferred to be known.

Barry was a brilliant and talented child. Or so his mother told him. He uttered his first words in English at the ripe age of 36 months, but it was clear that little O had been waiting for just the right moment. The momentous occasion was a play date with a young girl who had just managed to construct a knee-high tower out of Lego blocks. Barry, frightened that his comrade might develop a sense of self-worth, accomplishment or individualism, broke his non-denominational vow of silence to tell her, “You didn’t build that.” The play date ended rather abruptly thereafter and little Barry lost a friend and a comrade.

But that was just the first in a long list of the young Obama’s achievements. Of course, that depends on what the definition of ‘long’ is. Five years later, the eight-year-old Obama organized a community of action figures, dolls, and assorted toys to protest that they were not allowed by the ‘realist’ teacher to participate in snack time along with the other ‘real’ children. It failed, but Barry has often spoken tearfully of the struggle of Barbie, GI Joe and Tony Tonka to gain equality.

Four brief years later, Barry gained his first experience in foreign policy, negotiating a peaceful and multilateral response to the feared terrorist Jack. Jack had been extorting lunch money from Barry for about eight months and so, Obama’s infinite patience had finally been tested. After a few days, Obama managed to scrape together about fifteen signatures from other students who had been similarly terrorized by Jack. Upon presentation of the notice of sanctions, Jack responded with a rather simple question that stumped the young peacemaker: “What will you do if I don’t stop?” When Obama failed to answer to Jack’s satisfaction, he found himself the recipient of a knuckle sandwich. Barry learned two things that day: there is such a thing as a bad handout and that you better have more signatures than just the school Chess Club.

Soon thereafter, Barry began attending the most elite private school within 2500 miles while living with his banker grandparents. Of course, he was still struggling in those days. It was awfully difficult to determine which was a more selfless way to rebel against the fascist fashion-capitalist system: wearing fedoras, smoking joints while driving, or surfing. So, Barry decided to play it safe and spend every hour in every day doing all three.

The great fashion leader of our time.

It was at Occidental that Barry’s true talent first revealed itself. Soon thereafter, he transferred to Columbia before being accepted into Harvard Law School based on his stellar transcript and recommendations. These, however, shortly disappeared in another rendition of a tragic motif in Obama’s life. The diligent young man had been up late one night finishing his application to be Editor of the Harvard Law Review. In a stack on his desk lay the only copy of his college grades and the final and only draft of his one-and-only article to the Law Review. It succinctly and brilliantly laid out how the Constitution explicitly endorsed abortion all the way up to the sixth trimester. It would have changed the course of history – had Barry not confused the stack of academic papers for a similar stack of rolling papers torn from a non-discriminatory assortment of holy books. Up in smoke went the records and the brilliant article. Luckily for Barry, the Law Review was understanding and still selected him for Editor despite his never having written an article.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Obama’s life became simpler. He settled down in Chicago where he spent his entire career avoiding anything to do with the words “private,” “work,” or “real economy.” While there, poor Barry was the butt of many practical jokes at the hands of the well-known prankster Tony Rezko. Tony was a goodhearted although mischievous man and would often maneuver Obama into all sorts of tricky situations ranging from introducing the unwitting Obama to ex-terrorists to convincing Obama that the church he attended every Sunday for twenty years was actually a performance of avant-garde theater and that the man screaming “God damn Amerikkka” was actually just a very earnest actor. Tony’s piece-de-resistance had to be the time he managed to convince the newly elected Senator to run for President against the Clinton political machine. But this time Obama had the last laugh – as he ended up in the White House. Rumors persist that the last line in Obama’s inaugural speech was to have been “Take that, Tony!” but the teleprompters fortunately malfunctioned.

Obama soon discovered that President of the United States was far too small a job for his talents. Between fundamentally upsetting the field of economics to prove that “we had to spend more to keep from going bankrupt” and ensuring world peace by winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama trained himself in the ancient art of golf-fu which he would later use to singlehandedly invade Pakistan and bring back the body of Osama Bin Laden. It also doubled his bench press to fifty pounds in ten weeks! As a result of his amazing record, the President ran a resoundingly successful re-election campaign on the promise that in his second term he would singlehandedly destroy the deficit, discover the cure to old age, and develop Martian colonies populated by Obama-bots. As a result, he won every one of the 57 states.

Oh wait, none of that happened. Nor did anything else in this piece or “The Real Romney.” Well, may be a few things. But that’s besides the point. These two are just men. One who has had a record of accomplishment for the past forty years. And the other? Well, just look at the last four years. Higher unemployment, less liberty, and a far more dangerous world. That’s not the change we were promised. If the guy you voted for last time isn’t doing his job, you have to let him go. Even if it’s a nice guy like Barry. 

—J.P. Harrington