Presidential Outsourcing

The White House today announced a new realignment of executive branch duties. In keeping with recent management trends, President Bush has decided to outsource a number of his functions.

America’s first MBA President finally recognized that government is fundamentally inefficient and that he is, in fact, part of government. To achieve optimum productivity and efficiency, the President courageously looked to the private sector for help.

"I came to accept that I was part of the problem," said Mr. Bush. "If you want to have crucial decisions made by interested and knowledgeable people, outsourcing is clearly the way to go."

"It just seemed like a natural next step," said White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. "After all, if the military can contract out half of its jobs, why can’t we?"

President Bush has reportedly long desired to shed functions outside his immediate areas of interest. "Truth be told," said Mr. Bush. "I’ve never been big on domestic issues and I’m not all that keen on foreign affairs either." Thus, the former will now be handled by a consortium of American public relations firms and the latter have been contracted out to Halliburton on a no-bid, cost-plus basis.

It appears that this is only step one in an ongoing re-engineering process. For example, it is expected that domestic policy briefings can be produced more cheaply by Mexican consultants. And executives at Halliburton have already announced plans to seek additional savings by subcontracting certain foreign policy initiatives to firms in India.

When asked about his remaining duties, President Bush indicated that he intended to concentrate on what he called his "core competencies."

"I believe that it’s an inefficient use of my time and skills to have me read lengthy policy briefings on domestic and foreign issues," said Mr. Bush. "There are lots of people in the private sector who are far more interested in and capable of slogging through all that stuff."

Press Secretary Snow outlined the new arrangement of duties and highlighted the President’s top three priorities. From now on Mr. Bush will concentrate solely on tax cutting, fund raising and handshaking.

When asked to comment on how this latest reorganization will affect next year’s election, President Bush said he expected no significant changes.

"Given the new devolution of executive powers," said Mr. Bush. "I’ll have a lot more time to do what I do best and campaign for the next Republican candidate, assuming I’m asked."