I’d like to announce that I’m running for City Council. I feel like this city needs a change in leadership, and I’m the one who’s going to pump some fresh blood into the system. Is anyone else tired of stop signs? I’m really tired of stop signs. Always telling me to stop. I have two solutions to this problem. The first solution is to put up another stop sign directly facing every existing stop sign. So it will be like the new stop sign is telling the old stop sign to stop. Like stop telling everyone to stop! But it might get confusing. And what if one of the stop signs falls down? Then we’ll all be back to square one. My second solution is to take down every stop sign and to put up a “Go!” sign on every single block where there normally wouldn’t be any signs at all. And the exclamation point will be a part of the sign. Wouldn’t it be better to be motivated by a sign rather than discouraged? Why be surrounded by big red octagons constantly bossing us around? “Go!” is a much more positive message. “Go!” for it, in your car, in life, everywhere. Just go! And if you don’t see a “Go!” sign, then that’s probably where a stop sign once stood, so you know, you might want to consider stopping, but it’s not a rule, it’s up to you. This all about empowering the people. Personal responsibility.

And that’s just day one. We’re looking at a whole new city here folks. And it will be a whole new city. Completely changed. So I’ll need new challenges, new problems to solve. On day two I’m going to announce my candidacy for State Senate. Why limit myself to a single city when I could be in charge of creating legislation for an entire state? Aren’t you sick of the same old machine politicians with their machine politics and their machine political parties? Normally I love machines. I love them doing everything. Everything except politics. We shouldn’t be governed by machines, we should be governed by people, leaders, me. Don’t you guys hate tolls? And taxes? They’re so annoying. If I’m elected to the State Senate, I’m going to totally eliminate tolls. Or taxes. Not both because, well, let’s just try to get things done one at a time here. If I get rid of the tolls, I’m going to raise taxes, and vice versa. So it’s really just a matter of finding out which one is the bigger group, the people who pay tolls or the people who pay taxes. I’ll win over one group and make the other pay double. Either way I’ll be a hero, to the majority anyway.

I’ll have really made a difference. A political outsider, cleaning up his city and then tackling the entrenched corruption of the state. People might get really excited about my prospects as a career politician. There will be this huge grassroots movement to try to draft me to run for governor, to really consolidate my power. Someone might make a facebook page called, “Go! Rob! Go!” endorsing me as a gubernatorial candidate. They’ll use my “Go!” signs from my days in the City Council as part of the graphics, like as a throwback. So I’ll hold a press conference and I’ll make a big announcement. I’ll explain that state politics are getting a little boring, and that I’m really starting to feel the limits of state power. So I’m running for real Senator. State Senator is a pretty stupid job anyway. I can’t even name one actual State Senator.

And that’s that. Three weeks on the job and I’ll have already been elected to the Senate. And people will keep talking. What’s he going to do next? How far can he go? But that’s going to be it. Senator is the perfect job. You really only have to work like once every six years. If you want a little spotlight, you can grab a little attention, co-chair some committee or something. Or you could just be totally invisible. And I’ll just keep the job for the rest of my life. Every once in a while some muckraking journalist might start poking his or her nose where it doesn’t belong, but I’ll create a big distraction, claiming that I’m thinking about starting an exploratory committee for a potential presidential run. And people will start talking about that instead of whatever it was that that journalist was researching. And I’ll show up at state conventions and act all coy about my ambitions. But then I’ll just disappear again. Maybe I’ll be considered as a vice-presidential candidate for some unwinnable nominee trying to unseat a very popular incumbent president. That would be pretty cool. I think I’d give a great VP debate.

And then when I’m in my nineties I’d finally die in office, and everyone will be so sad that such a fixture of government is no longer with us. And all of the other Senators will give really long speeches. They’ll rename a bridge in my home state after me. And my firstborn son will inherit my Senate seat. And they’ll give me some cool nickname, like the Master of the Senate, or the Maestro. If I somehow knew that they gave me a cool nickname after I died, I’d be upset, wishing that they would have given it to me while I was alive, so I could have enjoyed it, or maybe even improved it, but I won’t have found out and I won’t have been upset, because, like I said, I’ll have already died.