President Obama recently gave his 2011 State of the Union Address.  A friend of mine who is frequently in the company of the President was in the room for the debriefing between the Mr. Obama and his closest associates and sent me a recording of the conversation that followed the event:

“Mr. President, that was wonderful!”

“Are you sure? I started thinking when I got out there that the whole “winning the future” bit was a little odd.  Obviously since it was about 70% of the speech I got pretty self conscious about it.”

“Odd?  How so? Like how dirty feet kind of smell like butter odd?”

“No, I mean grammatically odd, or logically odd or something.  How can you “win” a period of time that’s always moving?  You can’t.  You don’t think it was a little cheap sounding?  I felt a little like I was reading a slogan from a student council retreat.”

“Well it was definitely better than “keeping up with the Changs” and some of the other ideas.  Besides, if anything I’d say the slogan sounds like it was from a sales retreat, or maybe a church retreat.  Actually it sounds just like something it would say on the side of a free highlighter or stress ball you got when you signed up for a checking account at a credit union.  But even if it was, Sir, you only said it 73 times, so there’s a good chance nobody noticed.”

“You don't think my speech sounded too much like a Thomas Friedman column?”

“How so?  It didn’t contain a single reference to a specific idea that came to your mind while you were jetting around the Middle East for no reason, did it?  And you didn’t mention a single Southeast Asian business executive by name so I think you’re good.  You did mention math and science education, which I guess is a similarity, but the overall theme of winning the future, that was very, actually, that was exactly something he would say.  I’m sorry sir”

 “Crap.  Why didn’t I think of that when we were drafting it?”

“The reason you probably didn’t notice was that you were mostly concerned about reminding Vice President Biden that he would be directly behind you and thus, directly on camera, and that he shouldn’t make any silly faces”

“That’s right.  Was he listening?”

“He was, Sir, remember how he asked if he could make a silly face if he thought he saw someone in the crowd that he knew? Or if he remembered something funny about a dog that he had as a boy?”

“And we told him no right?”

“Right – he wasn’t happy. He said he once had a dog named Slippy and it would always steal his bacon, and he thought it was unfair to make a grown man sit there with a blank look on his face when he was thinking about how that old dog used to steal the bacon.  I asked him why he would be thinking about Slippy during your speech and his said he didn’t know, but he promised to do his best as long as he got a surprise for being good.”

“Did you get him a surprise?”

“We did, we got him a train whistle and an Amtrak conductor’s hat, but we only gave him the whistle now because I counted 13 inappropriate smiles from him, and one time where he just clapped for no reason, which he said was because he wasn’t paying attention and he got nervous and instead of giving Boehner an “atta boy” punch in the arm, which was what he said he wanted to do, he just clapped instead”

“Well at this point can you just give him the hat?  If he knows about it he’s just going to call me about it tomorrow."   

“(Ring, ring).  Excuse me Connie? Boss says just go ahead and give it to him.  Tell him he cannot use it until he’s out of the building, preferably not until he’s home.”

“Were any parts weird, I felt like that joke about the plane crash didn’t work very well?”

“To be honest Sir, your delivery was a little stilted”

“I know. Why do I suck so badly at delivering humorous lines?”

“It’s not actually that you suck at delivering lines – you just have this thing where if the joke requires any kind of foundation, you get this smirk on your face while you’re setting it up so everyone knows you’re about to try to be funny, and then you kind of rush the delivery.  Maybe if you didn’t telegraph your passes so badly”

“In fairness to me the joke wasn’t even that funny.”

“Sir I think it was definitely the most efficient way to warn against decreased government investment in innovation to liken it to removing the engine from an airplane.  How else could you have made that point?  You had no choice.  It’s not like you could have simply said “if we stop supporting innovation by our citizens, we might enjoy saving money now, but the nations that do support innovation will come up with all of the good ideas” Besides, The People demand analogies from their president, even if, like George W. Bush, you only pretend that you’re going to make an analogy, and just say the same thing you said over again only you say "in other words" before you say it." 

 “The way I told the joke we acted like we’d be removing an engine from an airplane that was already in the air.  Why would anyone do that?  How could anyone do that?  And why would that make someone feel better for a little while?  I didn’t study physics, but I don’t see how removing an engine mid-flight would make the flight better, even temporarily.  The plane is being suspended in the air because of lift, not because it’s lighter than air.  It’s like saying you might feel like you can run faster with one leg because you don’t have all that weight”

“Ha! Now that would have been funny sir”

“But it wouldn’t have made any sense either.  To be honest, they both sound like they were written by Thomas Friedman”

 “I don’t know sir. I don’t actually know much about science.  Perhaps we should have asked one of those Chinese students for help”

 “Did I hear someone say “win the future” we should use that!  That is dynamite!  WIN THE FUTURE! That’s a really a Cracker Jack phrase.  Where have I heard that before? Boy I’ll tell ya, man, that was some speech!”

“Good evening Mr. Vice President.  We’re just talking things over, you’re welcome to join”

“Not now, I’m late for my 11:20 to Wilmington – ALLLLL ABOARD!”