The History of the Challenge

One sunny day in the law library, some friends and I were discussing our venerable presidential history - our favorites, least favorite, best war time, best peace time, greatest sex appeal, etc. As you might expect, this rapidly degenerated into a ninja v. robot thought experiment in which we placed various presidents in hypothetical bouts against others, and ultimately ourselves. The question formulated was this:

Could you beat (President X), at the time he was in office, in a one-on-one street fight?

Numerous "no's" instantly stood out: Andrew Jackson. HW Bush.
Interesting toss-ups were debated: Taft. Nixon.
Few received an unqeustionable "yes": Jimmy Carter.

I posited that our current president fit this last category, and this was met with rather broad agreement. Slight build. Clearly a finesse player. Could not, in any world, be described as "grizzled". Harvard. There was a general consensus that Barack Obama, for all of his charisma and integrity, was nonetheless a clearly beat-uppable president. I later pitched this to my ex-girlfriend-turned-bff who, much to my dismay, laughed me off of the phone, doing unspeakable damage to my vast, overinflated ego.

Now, there's no doubt that her response was fueled by her womanly weakness for the O-Man, in addition to her unyielding allegiance to the left (she makes Justice Stevens look like Nathan Bedford Forrest), but her response sent me reeling nonetheless. What if I'm more out of shape than I thought? What if I really would lose a fight to Barack Obama?

Well, in a couple of months that's going to be a complete impossibility.

This summer, I will be vigorously training my mind, body, and awesome in order to shape myself into a presidential wrecking machine - creating myself anew as a sparkling adonis that is equal parts deadly and rad.

In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: "LET'S DO THIIIIS!!!"
And THAT son of a bitch wore a monocle.