I don’t know Tom Brady personally, but I’ve spent a lot of time watching him play football. In his role as quarterback for the New England Patriots, I’ve witnessed him do some pretty outstanding things, like make it through an interview with CBS analyst Jim Nantz, after Nantz has literally sucked the oxygen from the room.
Brady’s talents on the field are also impressive. There’s no player you’d rather have handling the ball on fourth-down-and-two with the game on the line. Just ask his coach, Bill Belichick. I’ve also seen him take enough hits to know he doesn’t buckle under pressure or quit after a serious head injury. But that’s Brady for you—always standing his ground, even if he’s not sure where it is.
When I think of Tom Brady, I think of Sam Malone from Cheers. Maybe it’s the musky scent of the Aqua Velva that I imagine he wears, or the way I picture him and his supermodel wife, Gisele Bündchen, going tit-for-tat with sexual innuendo à la Ted Danson and Shelley Long. Well, actually it’s because Tom understands those famous words in the theme song: “Our troubles are all the same.”
War, global warming, and two shows hosted by Howie Mandel are a lot for us to deal with. You might even get the feeling that civilization is down a couple of scores and entering the two-minute warning. Should we be concerned? Well, the precarious quarterback situation in Washington, D.C. doesn’t exactly bode well for the fate of humanity.
Redskins QB Jason Campbell is terrible, but Brady is better suited for the job of president, since Barack Obama isn’t that doing that well either. His passer rating in Congress is woeful and I have my suspicions that Vice President Joe Biden is really a foam cutout of wrestler Ric Flair—that, or something with less personality.
But as the clock winds down and Nantz steals the Earth’s air supply, a true Patriot waits for his opportunity to help the world. And who are we to deny him? Everything else we’ve tried hasn’t worked. Hugo Chavez’s in-your-face stand-up comedy didn’t make the world laugh itself to peace. Hillary Clinton’s steely gaze couldn’t shame the polar icecaps into re-solidifying, as physicists once believed it would.
What the world needs is someone with strong instincts and excellent game management skills—the kind of person who isn’t well versed in foreign policy or familiar with the finer points of climate change. We need someone who can do the job for now now. That’s why I nominate Tom Brady to lead the world in a fourth quarter comeback against, well, itself.
People are sure to question Brady’s apparent lack of experience in global affairs (“apparent” being the imperative word). Obviously, his credentials as a football player constitute relevant experience as both a delegator and public servant.
In the last decade alone, he’s posted an impressive record of service in the Greater Boston Area including three Super Bowl championships, four GQ covers, and 2007’s Sexiest Man Alive (ceded from Jason Bourne look-alike Matt Damon). By contrast, the current president’s only experience prior to election was as a senator, and he never played golf with Turtle on an episode of Entourage. As for Brady’s skills as a delegator, he’s on record for telling rival QB android Peyton Manning how (and where) he can troubleshoot his botched programming files.
But the most convincing argument for the New England pivot is his obvious transferable skills and the talented personnel he would bring to office.
Brady’s greatest strength as a leader is his ability to execute the game plan deceivingly. In order to do that, he’ll need the assistance of an experienced coach. The logical choice is crooked strategist Bill Belichick, whose take no prisoners approach has drawn comparisons to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, only meaner.
In order to optimize their alliance, Brady will need to convince Belichick to illegally surveil the sidelines of opposing countries to obtain the secrets of their playbooks. Brady will then divert other nations’ suspicions by lamenting the praise he often gets for sharing the ball and getting his teammates involved.
Having subdued the potential for further geopolitical crisis, mainstream media will switch their focus to the Brady administration’s lack of environmental responsibility. Brady understands that when the clock’s running down and no timeouts are left, you spike the ball to force a stoppage in play. This can’t happen literally, so he will need to use his weapons of mass deception.
One strategy is to assemble the offense in wildcat formation and propose the reduction of fuel emissions by using wide receivers Randy Moss and Wes Welker, as “green solutions” to the transportation of consumer goods cross-country. Of course, they needn’t worry about the impracticability of this play call, as the wildcat is primarily intended as a decoy. Belichick will see to it that the proposal is not effective until 2030. Close, but far enough away that people will forget.
Pressures to improve funding for public institutions such as schools and libraries may require a series of audibles to ward off blitzes from suspicious citizens. This is where things could get really sticky for the Brady administration, which could conceivably implement budget cuts for non-football related activities. Secretary of Education Tedy Bruschi might approve the use of Belichick’s biography, The Education of a Coach, in lieu of actual textbooks in public schools. However, this would require each copy to bear a new cover sleeve with either “Math” or “stuff without numbers” written on it. In public libraries, this may only mean crossing out author David Halberstam’s name and writing Malcolm Gladwell or Dan Brown instead. People won’t be able to tell the difference.
Clearly, life with Brady as President would be the sort of “no muss no fuss” arrangement that harkens back to the glory days of Reagan, where progress for the future is believed to come at the expense of a good time in the present. Change is a messy process and no one’s a fan of growing pains—the show or otherwise. I like Brady because he gives us our best chance of winning now. Although winning is an abstract concept in the political arena, don’t you want someone who at least gives the illusion of running things?
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady should be president now, so we can forget about later
