Hangover Cure

I get some of my best ideas drinking coffee. I get good ideas drinking whiskey, too, but I forget them before I can write them down.

I was drinking coffee in the office yesterday morning, instant coffee in a cup with a Christmas tree and the “Peanuts” character Snoopy on the side, when I came up with the best idea I’ve had since I decided to stop smoking cigars around my wife. Well, actually, the cigar idea was hers, but I got on board with it pretty quickly.

What I want to do is change the Constitution of the United States of America, of which I am a native-born, taxpaying resident who drives a 16-year-old pickup truck with a dent in the door.

In the city where I live, mayors are elected for a two-year term. People complain about that because it means the mayor is always campaigning and because if a mayor is a spectacular failure, his supporters insist that he hasn’t had enough time to get anything done. On the other hand, if the mayor IS a spectacular failure, it’s over in 24 months.

What I propose is that the United States elect the president for a two-year term — if it’s his FIRST term. If the guy (and so far, it’s always a guy) gets re-elected, THEN he gets four years. All other rules and restrictions currently in place would continue to apply.

Every job I’ve ever had involved a “probationary period,” usually 30 days, during which you could be fired for all infractions, both real and imagined. I always thought it was fair, and it meant that, for a month, I was the best employee they had.

Everybody makes mistakes. Sometimes, millions of people make the same mistake at the same time. Otherwise, how can you explain all those men over 40 wearing cargo shorts?

America, which is strong and screechy like a bald eagle, recently went on a big drunk. We mixed fake news with racism, strained it through the American flag, stirred it with a gun barrel and, when we woke up, Donald Trump was snoring in our bed.

Turns out, we married him, and now he’s sitting at the kitchen table in boxer shorts and a wife beater, loudly demanding breakfast.

So, we’re feeding him scrambled health care and a big pile of money.

It’s not going to be enough. After a while, the big slob is gonna want lunch.

And we can’t get a divorce for another three years.

Under my new plan, we still would have gone on that big drunk, but when the Breitbart and the Russian vodka wore off, the hangover would only last for two years.

And don’t tell me two years isn’t long enough for a president to get anything done. Trump’s only been in for a year, and he’s very nearly dismantled the entire country.

Besides, if you’re one of those people who thinks Trump is doing more for America than any other president, you’d have a shot to vote him in for a four-year term at the end of his first embarrassing stint in office. Heck, you could even vote him in for one more term after the second one.

The Constitution is a living document, and the presidency is a dying institution, so I think it’s worth changing the first to save the second.

Of course, it’s too late to fix the mess we’re in right now. That one is almost guaranteed to last another 36 months.

When you think of it that way, maybe the first term should only be for a year.