How to be a perfectly normal president or governor

By Sam Smith
Copyright 1997 The Progressive Review

THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW

A list of behavior the media apparently considers par for the course
You and your partners set up a resort land scam in which the unwitting buy thirdrate property in an isolated area. The contract is rigged so that about half the
purchasers lose their property.
While a public official, you receive a fifty percent equity in this property whil
e contributing only a minimal amount of the cash.
You use your public position to obtain sex.
You use state troopers to help you obtain sex when your public position isn't suf
ficient.
The head of your security detail gives evidence against a citizen of your state.
The judge accuses him of a "reckless disregard for the truth" and says that "no
jury could find by reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty." You name thi
s police officer to a $90,000 a year federal job.
A close associate defrauds the SBA and later claims that in one instance he did i
t for you.
Despite being warned, you allow huge quantifies of drugs to move through your sta
te without taking any steps to stop it.
You create a state economic development authority that turns into, at best, a pig
gy bank for campaign contributors and, at worst, a conduit for drug money launde
ring.
State troopers assigned to you are offered federal jobs in return for their silen
ce.
You appoint a soon-to-be convicted criminal to the number three post in the Justi
ce Department.
Despite having no prior experience, your wife makes a huge and odds-defying profi
t in cattle futures trading .
Your wife's former law firm shreds documents essential to an ongoing criminal inv
estigation.
Your chief health care adviser improperly holds secret meetings of your health ca
re task force, gives misleading court testimony and refuses to release relevant
public documents.
Documents of critical importance to the court case are shredded.
Your Little Rock campaign security chief gets gunned down in a mob-style slaying
and files he was keeping on you are stolen
Documents are removed from the office of a key aide immediately following his une
xplained death in a Virginia park. His computer hard disc is also damaged beyond
repair. Evidence at the death scene is apparently tampered with. Crime photos a
nd x-rays inexplicably turn up missing or underexposed. Your staff dissembles co
ncerning the time it learned of the death.
Your representatives, and possibly your wife, obstruct the investigation by polic
e officers into the aide's death.
At least one witness in the death discovers his FBI testimony changed without his
permission and finds himself subjected to overt harassment of a sort used again
st witnesses by police and intelligence agencies.
Essential documents related to criminal and congressional investigations are hidd
en in a White House office despite these documents being under subpoena.
Members of your staff deliberately mislead FBI agents investigating the use of Wh
ite House travel funds.
Your wife and a number of your staff offer testimony to Congress and are struck w
ith mass amnesia. In a 42-page statement, your wife says she doesn't recall (or

its equivalent) 50 times

Your secretary of agriculture resigns and is under investigation by a special pro
secutor.
Your commerce secretary, under criminal investigation, dies with others (includin
g corporate campaign contributors) in a plane crash, whose cause has yet to be a
dequately explained. Key evidence concerning the crash disappears.
Your Justice Department conducts a brutal assault on a religious cult in Texas th
at turns into a massacre of American citizens including children.
Your aides illegally obtain at least 900 personal FBI files of political enemies.
You establish, at taxpayer expense, a huge White House computer database used pri
marily for personal political purposes.
You and your staff allow access to the White House to campaign contributors who t
urn out to include drug dealers, Chinese arms merchants and spies, along with ot
hers seeking special and specific favors.
You treat the White House and other public facilities as premiums to be presented
generous donors.
Ten key witnesses in investigations concerning your administration take the Fifth
Amendment and three leave the country to avoid prosecutors.
Nine of your friends and associates plead guilty and 12 others are convicted of o
ver 50 felonies.