Bob Maistros

1.  When you are president of the United States and greeting foreign royalty, be sure to bow deeply and comically.  Ignore the facts that as head of a sovereign state, you are their peer and representing 300 million Americans; that as the highest official of the world’s first truly democratic republic, you are flouting two and a quarter centuries of protocol and tradition; and that as commander-in-chief of its most powerful nation, you are revealing both your inexperience and weakness to our friends and foes alike.

Change.

2.  When a classless, buffoonish, dictatorial strongman accosts you at an international gathering and thrusts an outrageous, insulting and specious piece of anti-American propaganda into your hands, be sure to greet him warmly like a long-lost brother and thereby encourage his globally condemned suppression of election procedures and human rights at home. And when another leftist dictator castigates America at the same gathering, be sure not only to give him a friendly shout-out but also to blame the imagined slights he has conjured up on your predecessors.

3.  While you’re at it, blame everything else on your predecessor, too. It’s easier and more fun than taking responsibility for your own actions.

4.  When dealing with other unrepentantly hostile regimes that are defiantly acting in direct contradiction to American interests, offer to “reset” relations, send your Secretary of State with a cheesy prop (and a bad translation) to signify your pliability, or indicate in advance that issues that are uncomfortable to them (i.e., human rights) are off the table.

5.  When violent terrorists from abroad organize the horrific slaughter of 3,000 innocent men, women and children and admit their guilt, make sure that their trial offers the opportunity to tie our entire legal system into knots and spew their hatred of America on the world’s biggest stage, while thrusting the city already twice victimized by their evil acts back into the crosshairs of global terror and into a security nightmare that could extend for years.

6.  On the other hand, be sure to break your security promises to your most loyal allies and pressure them to put the lives and well-being of their people at risk.

7.  Meanwhile, when political opponents at home disagree with you, accuse them of “scare tactics,” “scoring short-term political points,” “bickering,” “bogus claims” and “lies,” and mischaracterize their positions in the form of straw men you can then knock down. Offer them an open process, then join with your allies in Congress to ram through massive, paradigm-changing bills crafted behind closed doors – legislation that in many cases goes back on specific pledges you have made – and when they ask what right you have to do so, firmly respond, “I won.”

8.  When a cable news network gives equal weight to your opponents’ positions, trot out an underling to attack it as “opinion journalism masquerading as news,” operating as “the research arm or the communications arm” of the other party, and pointedly exclude them even as you pursue a round of interviews on other networks and arrange pool coverage for events.

9.  When a member of a local police department does his job, be sure to call him out for acting “stupidly” on national TV before you have all the facts.

In short, while attempting to callously suppress the interests of your friends abroad and real and imagined opponents at home, kowtow to the international community in general in ways that offer you not only global adulation but a better shot at winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

(Oops!  You already have one of those!  Well, there’s always the chance of being the first leader in history ever to haul in two.)

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