BILL DALEY: Boehner’s office just called, sir. He’s changed his mind. Says you can address the joint session next Friday at 2:00 a.m.
OBAMA: Cheeky b**tard. All right, accept. Eric, have Federal marshals available to round up and escort legislators to the Chamber. Encourage them to be rough with Republicans.
JAY CARNEY: Our dirty tricks team affixed a wireless speaker under Joe Wilson‘s seat, sir. We’ll trigger it to replay “You lie!” four minutes into your remarks.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Afterward, our technicians will enhance the audio, pinpoint the source, and nail him. Wilson will deny, but voiceprint analysis confirms it’s his voice.
OBAMA: And another firestorm. Man never learns.
DAVID PLOUFFE: Lotta voters throwing the Kool-Aid back in our faces, sir. I wonder if a speech touting investment in urine-powered cars and prefabricated bamboo homes will help your numbers.
OBAMA: Anyone with a better idea?
CARNEY: Do a 180, sir: have a “Come-to-Jesus Moment” before the whole country, announcing you’ve finally realized you’re a socialist ideologue.
OBAMA: Ouch! Why would anyone believe I really had this . . . epiphany?
DALEY: Once you’ve bared your soul, entreat Paul Ryan to take over immediately as OMB Director.
OBAMA: Ohhkk.
VALERIE JARRETT: And proclaim support for the Fair Tax, effectively eviscerating the IRS. Millions of NObamas would bless you, and maybe Neal Boortz would finally shut up.
OBAMA: Hmm. So, REALLY slash spending, except for Defense; dissolve the NLRB; open up drilling in Anwar and the Gulf; and join Republicans in the fight to overturn Obamacare?
PLOUFFE: That’s the idea, sir. You’d lose the base, of course, but independents and disaffected moderate Democrats would come flocking back when your actions sparked an economic boom.
JOE BIDEN: Might work, Boss. Govern like Palin until the election. With unemployment by then down to 5%, the Dow at 15,000, and gas at 99 cents a gallon, you’d be a shoo-in. On the day after you’re reelected, return to the tried and true policies that got us to where we are right now.
OBAMA: Ah. Allowing me to spend my final four years adhering to the principles which guided me through the first three. One step forward, two steps back. . . or is it one step backward, two steps forward?
JARRETT: Sounds tempting, sir, but you will be primaried if you turn hard right.
DALEY: Not necessarily a bad thing, Val. An internal contest might revitalize us all.
BIDEN: So, who’d the primary opponent be? Kucinich the Munchkin [snort]? Nader the Undead? Hillary the Shrillary?
PLOUFFE: Not Hillary. She’d beat him. I think . . . you, Mr. Vice-President.
BIDEN: Me?
PLOUFFE: Why not? Next to you, the President always looks good. When he wins the nomination, he’ll graciously offer to keep you on as VP.
OBAMA: Wait. Wait. Wait. Enough! I’d go crazy if I spent the next year trying to stay right of Perry, pretending to care what’s happening in flyover country. No. The economy’s down but not out yet. My job’s not done. We remain on course.
PLOUFFE: We can’t depend on natural disasters to distract voters all the way to the election, Mr. President.
OBAMA: Well, then, let’s create our own diversions. George?
SOROS: I pay couple pointy-head Kos Kids to tattoo svastika und American eagle on shaved skulls, guest on Hardball, und threaten uprising unless President impeached.
WILLIAMS: Clever. The other anchors and I could use the appearance as a pretext to go after anyone to the right of Dick Lugar.
HOLDER: Along the same lines, sir: there’s a Boy Scout jamboree at an isolated compound in West Texas next spring. I’ll stage a variant of the Waco siege to incite Perry, Romney and the others to make inflammatory statements about both of us. Time and Newsweek will be all over them like brown on rice.
DALEY: Don’t you mean “like white on rice”?
HOLDER: My idioms are politically correct, Bill, even if they don’t make sense. Anyway, their wingnuts’ heads will explode.
WILLIAMS: MSNBC will run 24/7 to frame the hotheads as a threat to civil order and lump them in with the GOP to delegitimize the party.
PINCH SULZBERGER: The Times can prep the ground. Before the raid, we’ll run a story on an Evangelical sect using the jamboree as cover to plot an armed revolution. Eric Lichtblau’s available since the smoke’s cleared following his discredited hit piece on Chairman Issa of Oversight; it’ll be a nice break for him after a few months on the obituary desk.
JARRETT: We could use one more major distraction sometime next summer.
PLOUFFE: How about a purge, sir, of, uh, people who have given you bad advice?
OBAMA: You mean . . . you and Valerie and Bill and Eric and . . . .
PLOUFFE: Not the inner circle, sir. Scapegoats.
OBAMA: Hmm. Geithner’s expendable. There’s nothing more he can do to undermine faith in our financial system. And Napolitano–she’s getting too big for her britches.
HOLDER: [wagging finger] Careful, sir; such language would be considered sexist coming from anyone not a member of an oppressed minority.
CARNEY: I’m late for my briefing, Mr. President. What should I say to reporters regarding heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula?
OBAMA: Leon, what are your sources telling you about Kim Jong II and the Koreas?
PANETTA: We know he has an STD, sir, but I’m not sure it’s that one.
OBAMA: Uh, do you have any HUMINT for me?
PANETTA: Um, no. May I offer you a stick of spearmint, instead? Geithner took over Wrigley’s last week, so it’s gummint approved . . . . I was making a joke, sir.
OBAMA: Leon, tomorrow I want you to hire an undocumented Guatemalan housekeeper, then resign as soon as you realize what you’ve done.