I, Me, My.

All my life I have watched Presidential addresses and various speeches.  It doesn’t take much of a leap, or social Darwinism, to see the possibilities these speeches present for someone like me.

Drinking games.

Starting in college we would sit and watch these events with full cases of beer and creative minds.  Eventually we determined that too many rules left most of us unable to make it through the first half of the address, and the other half unable to remember who was supposed to do what.  So we simplified…

We adopted our own set of words.  All of the other participants knew what our words were and when uttered by the president were quick to make sure we imbibed accordingly.  The words I chose were “I, Me and My“.

I remembered from the Reagan days that his philosophy was; as a leader you didn’t employ the words I, Me and My unless you were speaking to some personally subjective state like “feeling”.  He also felt that it was an easy way to judge the character of the leader in front of you as the employ of these words exposed how the individual viewed the world.  In other words they represent the brilliance around them or, instead, they are brilliance for all to see.  Most often using these words exhibited insecurity more than anything else.

I always liked my words because for the most part they kept me sober… somewhat.  Leaders just don’t use these words.  This remained true until the Clinton Administration.  Seemingly, his biggest violation of this “rule” is his never-ending desire to remind all of us that the administration was “his”.  It was “my” this and “my” that.  I drank a lot.

I got a reprieve during Bush who moved to “us” and “we” for the most part.

Apparently Obama has caught wind of our little game.  Someone told him that we all still gather during the State of the Union and other addresses with beer in hand.  With this knowledge, he  seemingly has decided to step it up a notch.

During the first year of the Obama Administration he gave more televised speeches than any other President in history… and I had a hard time getting anything done as sobriety was a scarce commodity.

It slowed down until now.  If I were you, I would by stock in Budweiser.  Right now!

To illustrate my point I just pulled up a speech from a couple of weeks ago… Obama used “I” 28 times and “me” once.  Considering an honest pull off a beer is about 2 ounces this ends up being a 5 beer speech…. given at 10am… on a Tuesday.  You see the problem.  Yes, the first year was very difficult.

As of late, I have been struggling with the campaign and everything it seems the president has personally executed beginning with Osama Bin Laden.  From his making the call, to his personally pulling the trigger, to his personally flying the seals to safety, I have been drinking a lot.  There seems to be no end to the myriad ways to use “I, Me, My”.

It should be an interesting election year.  At least the parts I can remember.

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