A Better President

Not being in possession of full citizenship, I am presently unable to vote, which isn't going to stop me from telling you who to vote for. Therefore, here are my suggestions for ten potential candidates who would probably make a better job of it than the gentleman currently in the hot seat.

El Chapo. I realise that Joaquín Guzmán Loera is not only presently legally inconvenienced, and that he's not even an American citizen, and that - if we're going to be picky - he's a bit of a live wire in certain respects; but if we really must have a president who is, first and foremost, a businessman, then it should at least be a guy who knows what the fuck he's doing. I'm not even joking here.

Spongebob Squarepants. I don't know much about Spongebob Squarepants beyond that he lives in a pineapple under the sea, but in a political climate which is more about public relations than policy, he dresses well and has a winning smile in addition to a positive attitude. Critics will doubtless point out that Spongebob is a cartoon character and is as such not real, but personally I suspect we're a long way past that making much difference.

Tim. I met Tim on the art foundation course I took back in the early eighties, and we kept in touch, although I often found our friendship frustrating bordering on pointless. We fell out a couple of years ago during a facebook argument over UKIP. He thought they were okay, and I thought they were a shower of shite. Amongst the reasons he gave for his enthusiastic support of UKIP was some nebulous guff about energy and the economy, and how he didn't want the United Kingdom to become like America. I still have no idea what qualified him to pass comment on anything being like America given that he'd barely travelled outside of Warwickshire. When I first announced that I would be marrying an American woman, he offered a sequence of clichéd observations which one might justifiably have expected of an eight-year old schoolboy living in a rural area of England in 1967, but which sounded a little weird coming from a grown man in the twenty-first century. When I pointed this out, Timothy's defence was that he knew all about Americans because he had once encountered one at the antiques centre in Stratford, and golly - what a cracking chap he'd been; and even taking all this into account, Timbo - as he occasionally refers to himself - would still make for a better president.

George Clinton. If you don't know who George Clinton is, you probably need to go back to the beginning and start your life all over again. The reason he would make a great president is that he's George Clinton, in case that isn't obvious; and no, I don't think he's related.

MC Ren. MC Ren is one of the members of NWA whose story was somewhat sidelined in the Straight Outta Compton movie, which seemed a little unfair given his having been at least as integral to the group as any of the rest. Since NWA, he released a series of increasingly terrifying solo albums which communicated his being a man of fortitude, conviction, and strong opinions. It may be deemed problematic that the strong opinions expressed on Attack on Babylon ran along the lines of let's go shoot some white people, but I expect he was just having a bad day, and you can at least see where he was coming from.

Barack Obama. Because why the fuck not? It's legal and he already knows the job. I expect he still has the suit and all that. I never claimed he was a saint, and I regard all politicians as inherently untrustworthy on some level, so we might at least have a politician who can spell his own name; plus it would be worth it just to watch all those heads exploding in the more conservative neighborhoods.

Ahuizotl. Ahuizotl ruled the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan from 1487 to 1502. Following the distinctly underwhelming reign of Tizoc, he expanded the influence of the Triple Alliance on an unprecedented scale, and also - as I've only just found out - introduced grackles to central Mexico. I've read a lot about the guy and have always found him fascinating. His rule, were he somehow rendered a practical choice by means of either cloning or time travel, would probably be unspeakably cruel but fair.

The President of Mexico. I'm not sure who it is right now, and I can't be bothered to look it up, but I'm sure he'd do a reasonable job should the existing border be nudged up towards the lower reaches of Canada as part of the Make America Mexico Again campaign; at least in the event of el Chapo being unavailable.

Mick Johnson from Brookside. As a fictitious character from an English soap which got cancelled fifteen years ago, Mick Johnson may seem an unorthodox presidential candidate, but my freedom to suggest that he'd still do a better job than the current idiot is still just about protected by the first amendment, although that may soon change. The Johnson presidency would be characterised by steroid abuse and lots of hanging out with a fat guy called Sinbad. President Johnson would be remembered for his slightly menacing catchphrase, what do you think you're playing at, Leo?

Malcolm. I don't remember his actual name or much about him, but Malcolm was a boy with curly ginger hair in the year below us at school. We called him Malcolm because his hair reminded us of Malcolm McLaren, the manager of the Sex Pistols. For some reason he had an ongoing feud with my friend Graham. I'm not sure who started it, although it may have been because Graham called him Malcolm. On one occasion, he approached Graham whilst swinging an Adidas sports bag around at arm's length and knee height as he delivered the warning, 'You'd better watch out because I'm a bagswinger,' as though attempting to convince us that this was some newly devised martial art. Graham later wrote a heavily sarcastic song mocking Malcolm and his underwhelming show of strength, and the song was called Bagswinger. I don't know anything else about Malcolm, but I'm still fairly confident that he couldn't make quite such a shitty job of the presidency as the man with the little hands.