Editor’s Note: Belacqua may have slipped out of the wetlands. I found his letter on my front porch this morning, the paper perfectly dry and the ink unsmudged. Given the shakiness of the handwriting the letter was probably written on the run.
Dear George,
It’s time to consolidate your rule. Your efforts to date have been Herculean. The foundation has been laid, the structure completed. Now it’s time to add the decorative trim.
Madison Ave. has been your John the Baptist, making straight the path for the Lord’s representative on Earth. Stop and think. I know you don’t get out much to go shopping or sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office or take public transportation. But touch bases with one of your low-level staffers. They can bring you up to speed on the way the ubiquitous television screen and the speaker, oozing its canned music, have infiltrated the dark nooks and crannies of our existence.
On a large-screen TV the pharmaceuticals entertain us in the doctor’s waiting room; Supermarkets break into the canned music to give us inspirational messages about their latest special; screens are elbowing their way into the classrooms of America bringing our children filtered news and Nike commercials; bouncy commercials entertain us while we wait for ATMs to spew forth our cash; New York City has started mounting plasma TV screens over the entrance to their subway stations. The public is increasingly existing in a virtual world in which the mind is numbed by the magic of images floating across the ever-present screen.
Now imagine, George, just imagine for a minute: what if you could patch all those television screens and loudspeakers into the oval office. Think of the possibilities. Every half hour you face would flash on the screen delivering a carefully scripted fifteen, thirty or sixty-second sound byte. No long boring speeches, which, in all honesty, are a bit of a challenge to you, no more press conferences at which the media might ask embarrassing questions, no more public appearances with all the inherent dangers associated with them. There would be only your face and your voice with its mixed message of reassurance and terror.
Coupled with this would be an initiative to insure total saturation. Let no room in America be denied a screen or a speaker. Everywhere America turned, there you’d be, looking and sounding presidential. Hell, given the advances in wireless technology we could plant a screen every hundred yards along the entire length of the Appalachian Trail.
Madison Avenue calls it market saturation.
Next we have to take a close look at your wardrobe. The dark suits are okay if you’re trying to project a statesman-like image. But statesmanship is so yesterday. Your success depends upon keeping this country in a constant state of conflict. We gotta be fighting somebody, somewhere all the time. Jingoistic warfare sells. So I’m thinking the military look might play better. You could go with the flight suit, but given the flap over your Vietnam service that might have a negative overtone. Probably a dress military uniform designed by Tommy Hilfiger would work. I see dark blue festooned with gold braid and stripes. Have Rummy score a chest full of ribbons for you from DOD surplus. Oh yes, in addition to the American flag pin on your lapel put a cross on the other one. Let people know where the hell you’re coming from.
If you have any questions about wardrobe, pardon Martha Stewart and let her put something together for you. She could also throw swatches of fabric around the oval office to underscore whatever mood or emotion you were trying to convey.
Kick it around with your people. The important thing is to wean the public from any thoughts about a “democratic process”. It’s high time the public grew up and accepted our imperiosity.
Although on the run, I remain:
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:44:36 AM 
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