A Sharp Life Rewind: If my daughter ran the G20 summit
This column originally appeared in the Odessa American newspaper July 16, 2017. It appears here by permission of the newspaper. The text of this column appears as it originally did 3 years ago, but we have taken the liberty of adding a few visual aids and clarifying comments.
As you might have heard this last week there was a controversy about the President.
I’m sorry, for a moment I almost forgot that you might need a little more information than that. The particular controversy which I am referring to is President Trump allowing his daughter, Ivanka, to sit in for him at the G20 summit in Germany.
A great many people are outraged at this breech of protocol. I suspect a lot more people are outraged than actually know what the G20 summit is, but that is a topic for a different column. For the record, I had to look up exactly what the G20 summit is, and it is a gathering of the world’s largest economies to discuss matters of finance that have a bearing on the international community.
The point of today’s column is not to suggest that you should or shouldn’t be outraged, but rather to consider the idea of what it will be like for me to allow one of my daughters to sit in for me at this summit when I am elected president in 2020. Now, you might not even know that I am running, after all I haven’t declared myself a candidate yet, but at the rate things are going I am thinking in three years I’ll have a pretty good chance.
I can picture it now, a room full of important officials, and my almost twenty-three-month-old Demolitions Expert* waiting for the meeting to start. The meeting begins and suddenly she starts shouting, “SNACK! SNACK! SNACK!” At first the leaders of these other countries will try to ignore her, but soon enough they will realize that either somebody gets her some crackers, or they find out where the Demolitions Expert nickname comes from. Eventually, someone will find a vending machine with some Goldfish or Teddy Grahams and she will be momentarily satiated. It will be at this point that they put a Power Point slide up on the screen. Emboldened by her success with the snacks the Demolitions Expert will now begin hollering out, “Mouse! Mouse! Mouse!” her signal that she wants to watch an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. After attempting to dissuade her sooner or later they will give in, not realizing that she is never happy with just one episode. By the time she is done they might just cancel the next summit in advance.
What are the implications of this? World economies could grind to a halt. The stock market might crash. Gold would skyrocket in value. To be honest I’m not sure what all the consequences would be, but I can promise you this: If my daughter brings about a global economic crisis we will all still have Goldfish and Mickey Mouse.
These days we could do a lot worse.**
* We now refer to her as the Fashionista. She is approaching 5 as of this writing and occasionally still has her Demolitions Expert moments.
** Ah 2017, when we just thought we were all on board the crazy train. Now we realize we really are on the crazy train headed downhill, with the brakes out, and the bridge over the large river collapsed.