"Blacks? Is that you?"WASHINGTON—Since the election of America’s first black President, Barack Obama, the nation has been buoyed by the landmark achievement's potential to improve the country's historically contentious race relations. Sources inside the White House say that this excitement has reached all the way to the current President, George Bush. According to these same sources, President Bush has been giddily waiting by the phone, ready for what he considers the inevitable phone call from the black community thanking him for all he's done in laying the groundwork for America’s acceptance of a black President.
Staff say the president has been eating all of his meals by the telephone, even sleeping in his Oval Office desk chair in anticipation of the call. Despite repeated attempts by aides to dissuade him from the vigil, noting that they will tell him when the phone call comes, Bush has stated unequivocally that he wants to be the one to pick up the phone to receive the kudos he knows are coming. At the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that word might come by telegram, letter, or e-mail, the President has steadfastly asserted his belief that it will be a phone call, a belief stengthened further when President-elect Obama did not deliver such a message during their meeting yesterday.
“I don’t think the black community understands how much he needs this,” observed White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. “He understands that he doesn’t have much time left in office and that he won't get much important legislation passed, apart from getting the Sammy Sosa Post Office in Lubbock built and changing the name of the Smithsonian to 'The National Museum of Awesome Shit.' He just wants recognition for something that doesn't involve a crumbling financial system, squandered international status or misspent military ordnance."
Friends are quietly wondering if this situation will turn out the same way it did when Bush was waiting for a thank you from the Iraqi people. His stubborn and pigheaded insistence that Iraqis come and thank him while they were chest-deep in sectarian violence was a noted inexplicable hallmark of his early Iraq war pontificating.
“Oh God, don’t bring that up,” former Chief of Staff Andy Card reminisced. “We’re sitting there telling him we need decisions on what areas to protect and whether we should disband or employ the Iraqi army and all he was doing was sitting by that phone saying ‘It’s gonna come. They’ll thank me for this. You’ll see.’ We finally moved him into some rudimentary work but then he got bitter. His first meeting with Nouri al-Maliki just devolved into a colossal guilt trip. Bush eventually started holding his breath until Maliki said thanks. He’d hold his breath, pass out, get revived, hold his breath, pass out, and get revived, over and over again. Finally Maliki threw his hands up, yelled “Thanks!’ and ran out the door terrified for the future of his country. Bush just groggily got up and murmured ‘Anytime, Nouri, anytime.’ I don’t think blacks know what they’re in for.”
Chief among Bush’s reasons for feeling he’s owed a debt of gratitude is his appointment, first of Colin Powell, then Condoleeza Rich, to Secretary of State. That they were both discredited to the point of near irrelevance by the sheer bankruptcy of the administration's polices means nothing to the President.
Detractors counter that the entire arc of Bush's Presidency didn’t lead to the acceptance of a black man as President. They argue that after the sheer enormity of his failures, the nation was primed for anybody to come in and lead; black, Chinese, woman, Labrador, or sentient iPod. Others counter that such a simple explanation fails to understand the sheer brilliance of George W Bush.
“You don’t know how many sacrifices he had to make for this day to come,” revealed Karl Rove, taking time out of his schedule of soul reaving orphans to do an interview. “His entire Presidency was clearly a concerted effort to discredit the entire notion that privileged white men were fit to lead. Iraq, Katrina, torture, wiretapping, selling the Moon to the Chinese, breaking the Hoover Dam, the economic meltdown, all those missing white girls. Surely you don’t think that was all coincidence? It was a deliberate program of incompetence designed to shatter racial barriers and make even racist white people think about voting for a black guy. Want proof? Just look at the election data. You’ve got to pull some drastically evil shit to make Appalachia think that even a black man couldn’t do worse.”
“But it worked and Barack Obama is the fruit of our eight-year labor. We don’t need a parade or a George Bush day or a street in the place of Martin Luther King. But a little, 'We appreciate it', maybe one of those terrorist fist jabs? That's not a lot to ask. We’ve earned it.” When asked if this was just a cynical attempt to grasp onto any form of a legacy after eight years of abject failure, even if it meant claiming credit for black people getting elected, Rove just cackled, then disappeared in a flash of green light and smoke.
In lieu of attempting to convince one of America’s black leaders to call, staff is mulling over the option of sending in a member of the White House cleaning staff to say thanks. Initial calls to the Congressional Black Caucus went unreturned, as they were too busy working over Ralph Nader with a lead pipe. Sources have reported President-Elect Obama saying they “…should maybe send Bush, Rove, and all of them a gift basket” but it was generally believed that he was being sarcastic and no basket is imminent.
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