The Best Candidate for President? Four College Kids
The authors are staff writers at The Harvard Lampoon, the school’s 150-year-old humor magazine.
As college students on the cusp of graduation, we face an uncertain future. We’ve spent the last few years sleeping in class, cheating on homework assignments in our dreams, and discussing the nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In other words, we are anything but prepared for real work.
So as we gaze into the soul-sucking, meaningless abyss that is postgraduate life, we can’t help but ask: What’s the fastest track to success? Med school plus residency would take eight years. Becoming a CEO, nine. Even the failed-actor-to-barista pipeline is six years minimum. But there’s one job that’s available to every American. A job that you can get in one day, with no interview. A job that allows you to both follow your passions and make a real difference: the presidency.
Now, we’re not stupid. We know that the president technically needs to be 35 years of age. But to that we say: What does 22 plus 22 plus 22 plus 22 equal? Surely it’s over 35. Historically, the president has never been four separate people. But think about how much the president has to do on a daily basis: Shaking hands. Kissing babies. Shaking babies. Just one-fourth of the job is quite a lot of responsibility.
Congress has only allocated only $400,000 dollars for the presidential salary, but $100,000 isn’t bad for your first job out of college. Plus, it’s D.C. It’s not like we’re living in Beverly Hills. The gig comes with housing, which allows us to skip the hunt for a grubby sublet, and we hear the whole place is prefurnished. Granted, we’re probably looking at a few hundred a month for food and gas, but that still leaves us with plenty of money to launch our AI dog-walking startup.
But this job isn’t just a great fit for us. It’s a great fit for you, too, America. We’re young, fresh, nubile, and young — in other words, the perfect people to beat Trump as he runs for his third term. Here’s why:
- Tariffs: We’re going to tariff the tariffs. If every 25 percent tariff has a 25 percent tariff on it, then by the properties of math, those tariffs become only 6.25 percent. This calculus, plus allowances for every country in the world, should keep the economy stable even while maintaining Trump’s reforms. Here’s a brain teaser to help you understand our goals for the domestic economy: If one tariff is coming at you at 6.8 percent and another tariff is heading toward you at 5.47 percent, at what point will Ted Cruz die?
- Immigration: Amidst mass deportations, Trump seems to have forgotten that America is a country of immigrants. We intend to remind him of this fact by deporting everybody. Then, we’ll host a singing competition to determine who’s allowed back in. Inspired by The Voice, it will be called The Visa, and by the end, the only Americans left will be those with angelic voices.
- Manifest Destiny: Though Trump is onto something with this whole “annexing Greenland” business, he’s not thinking big enough. When we’re in charge, we’re going to annex Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Thailand, New Zealand, and, if we’re skilled enough at negotiating, Disneyland. Once every other country is annexed, it will be impossible for anyone to be considered an immigrant because they will all be U.S. citizens. Out of national pride, we also intend to change South America’s name to America. It’s cleaner.
- Defense Budget: It has been bloated for years — as commanders-in-chief we’ll immediately shift military funding away from warfare and establish an Offense Budget, which, by the established rules of nomenclature, would be concerned with promoting peace and love through song.
- Vice President: For transparency’s sake, we’re planning to delay selecting our vice president until elected. If you see white smoke coming from the Oval Office, that means deliberations are over, and we’ve settled on the proper combination of eight 11-year-olds to support our operations.
- Covid: What happened to Covid? It feels like no one’s talking about the disease that gave us a chill excuse to hang out with our moms, as well as a sanctuary from the torment of in-person bullying. When elected, we’re going to bring Covid back in a big way. The stimulus checks from Covid-27, Covid-28: A New Hope, Covid-29: Omicron Strikes Back, and Covid-30: Return of the Booster will do revolutionary things for our economy.
- Guns: Similarly, all this Zohran Mamdani talk has made it clear that America is forgetting about the one thing that binds us together. Guns are one thing every red-blooded American can agree on as being good in all instances, no matter the context. Nonetheless, change must happen for change’s sake. We plan to replace all guns with water guns, replace all water guns with real guns, and teach every schoolchild the elusive art of the bow and arrow.
- DOGE: Spearheaded by German fairy-tale villain Elon Musk, the Department of Government of Efficiency has been spiraling out of control. Under our administration, we will demand that DOGE establish several DEI subcommittees and hire a 500-person HR team. The department will subsequently be forced to cut its own funding, to which Harvard President Alan Garber will fold his arms and smile ever so smugly.
- Health care: We will not be doing this.
- Population Growth: Trump wants to offer women $5,000 to have a child. We will keep that policy, but add a policy by which women will receive $5,001 for every abortion received. This is what economists call an “infinite money glitch.”
- Culture: To ring in the next Golden Era of Hollywood, we will place a tariff on any animated films depicting foreign soil. For example: Ratatouille? No, thanks. Cars? All good. Moana? We’ll have to get back to you on that one.
- Higher Education: What’s the point of college anymore anyway? As every young person knows, the only way to be successful these days is to go viral enough on Instagram Reels that you can start advertising skincare products and paid VPNs, eventually creating your own podcast to advertise home security systems and online mental health services. Anyway, we’re cutting federal funding to every public and private university in the country.
- Gifts From Foreign Countries: Unlike the sitting president, we would never accept a jet from Qatar. We would, however, accept oil. Lots and lots of oil. Our ultimate goal is to be able to drench ourselves in oil, and then wash ourselves off using more oil. Then oil-wrestle the strongest challenger from any opposing country, under the agreement that the winner will become the king of both nations.
- Ceasefire: A new bombshell has entered the villa! And it’s not a GBU-57. That’s right. We’re sending Netanyahu and the Ayatollah to Love Island, where the only harm they can cause is heartbreak.
With these 14 points, we intend to make not just the country proud, but our parents, too. No more texts asking for laundry money — just texts asking for multimillion-dollar campaign donations. But we need your support. So, when the time comes, turn off your televisions and leave your babies home alone. Come vote for us. And if you don’t, our backup career plan is to collectively become the second American pope.
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