Obama Outs Himself

In a surprise move, President Obama publicly announced that he is a liberal. Apparently he had known for a long time about his true political orientation but chose to hide it from everyone including his own family.

"Yes, I am a liberal," said Obama. "I know this may come as a shock to many people but I felt that it was time to be true to myself and finally come out of the closet."

The newly elected president admitted that he had known for many years that he was a liberal.
"Even when I was a young boy," said Obama. "I knew I wasn’t like most of my friends. While they all seemed quite happy with the status quo, I often got strange stirrings whenever I engaged in so-called progressive discussions or read the editorial page of The N. Y. Times."

Some observers say that Obama’s coming out was not unexpected given the historical signs. Although he always professed to be a moderate and sometimes even a fiscal conservative, it was clear to close friends that he had an affinity for left-of-center politics. Former school chum Marty Flickstein wasn’t surprised by the President’s recent revelation.

"We all knew Barry was a little different," said Flickstein. "We’d all be stealing copies of our dads’ Playboys and he’d be filching back issues of The New Republic. He said it was just to look at the pictures but we all knew he was actually reading the articles."

Back in the eighties, Obama was known to frequent so-called "liberal" clubs where regulars could talk about Keynsian economics and huge government social spending without fear of exposure.

"It wasn’t easy being a liberal during the Reagan years," said a longtime free-thinking comrade of Obama’s. "Just saying the word could destroy any electoral hopes you might have had. We all knew Barry wanted to be mainstream and hold an actual elected office but if his taste for things liberal had ever gotten out, his political career would have been finished."

During the nineties, Obama chose to keep his liberalism a secret from almost everyone, including his wife Michelle.

"I’m ashamed to admit it," said America’s 44th president. "But I didn’t even tell the person closest to me that I had these strange yearnings. I guess she always suspected when she found all those Galbraith books in the basement but she never confronted me with them."

Now that Obama is out of the closet, it appears that he is going to let his true political colors show.

"I feel so free," said the President. "I can finally be my true self and act in accordance with my real political feelings."

Asked how this will affect his governance of the country, Obama said that he didn’t think it would make that much of a difference.

"After all," said the President. "I’m not one of those leather bar, tax-and-spend liberals. I’m just a regular guy who happens to like social programs. One thing I will do, however, is implement a new policy for my cabinet regarding individual political orientations, something I call: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’."