As the next president, the former Governor of Minnesota transitioned into office, President Winston was well on his way to going in the history books as America’s most popular president. A cabinetmaker from Tennessee, with no experience in the arena of politics, lead this country for eight peaceful and prosperous years.
The floodgates opened.
Many thought the process was repeatable, and several times over the next half century, it was. I don’t have hard numbers, but it looks like about every other presidential campaign contained at least one lottery winner as a candidate. Some had more.
Some went broke, not able to generate the popularity of the late great president Winston, while others garnered some of the same success as Winston. America was becoming the butt of the world’s joke, when it came to political office, and the candidates who were winning seats.
Leadership by lottery. Win the lottery, and buy yourself a seat in government. Those with less ambition ran for lower profile seats. Lottery winners won state legislative seats, Congress, the Senate, and a few governorships.
My little synopsis of presidential history leads us to how I landed here in the Oval Office. I bought a lottery ticket. Me, a screw up in school. Drummed out of the Army for the same reason. Spent my life wallowing in mediocrity. Hell, until the new lottery came along, I never even played.
Yet, as the more and more “average joes” won the highest office in the land, and the country didn’t go to hell, the people asked…demanded congress make a change. No more electoral college, no more campaigns, no more hanging chads.
Sorry for the ancient reference, if you get it, good for you!
I bought one lottery ticket in my life. It cost me a hundred dollars. Unlike all the lottery’s before it, the odds of winning was not a predetermined figure, but based on the number of tickets purchased. For my one hundred dollars, my odds depended on how many people wanted a shot at four hundred thousand dollars a year for life.
That was my prize for winning the first ever, Presidential Lottery. I now sit in the highest office in the land, me, a former truck driver. I bought my seat at the head of the most powerful nation in the world for the low, low, price of one hundred dollars.
Wonder if I made my grandma proud.