Good morning, John.

If you're a somewhat public person on the internet, every once in a while you will do something that someone likes, and they'll say you should run for President or something like that. And this is fun. Occasionally, I get the impression that people would actually like vote for me, and I wanna talk about that.

I used to think that I could never run for office because the things that I've done on YouTube are just too embarrassing, but we have had a stint of politicians who've really blazed a new path for the kind of cringe nonsense you can get away with and still somehow be a viable candidate. Humped a statue of a fish? Yeah, that's fine. Lauren Boebert got to second base during a touring production of Beetlejuice before getting kicked out for unrelated vaping, and we just forgot about that, so I think the fish thing's probably gonna be okay. 

So instead of using the "I can't do that" excuse, I have to rely on the "I don't want to do that" excuse for why I would not run for office. Now, you might be surprised or maybe not to hear that I have in fact been asked I have had people from the Montana Democratic Party ask me if I would be interested in running for a local office, which is cool. Like, it's cool to like see the process where a political party is on the lookout for influential people who would hopefully represent their communities well. But I didn't want that so I said no.
 
While of course it makes sense for people like me with very little experience in government to explore running for a state or local office, I do hope that no one would vote for me if I was in the presidential primary. I do not believe anyone who doesn't have a pretty big honk of experience in government should run for President. Like, the government is a lot of things but chief among them, it is complex. The President of the U.S. manages nearly 3 million federal employees; They broker national relationships with the heads of other countries; They send Americans to die in wars; They also lead a political party; And they need to somehow work with 535 congresspeople to get a single law passed, and every one of those 535 people from 50 different states are all running for their own elections all the time.

It sounds like a hard environment in which to get things done. It's not something that someone will be good at because they are based or have good vibes. I assume that we know this, but a lot of people don't know this. A lot of people love the idea of an outsider because they believe that the system must have corrupted anyone inside of it, and certainly we have allowed the influence of cash money to become far too important and there is something to be said for a candidate who builds influence through methods that don't involve buying advertisements with money given to them either by special interest groups or donated after texting you the 200th very important personal message. 
 
What the–. I feel like my phone is trying to tell me something.

I do think that sometimes what people see as corruption is corruption, but sometimes it is, like, the knowledge of complex systems and working for multiple groups with conflicting wants and needs and crafting a piece of legislation very carefully so that 50 senators will feel comfortable voting for it. I think you do want someone with an audience and with a group of people who care about them and support them, but you also want someone with experience inside of that system.

For signs that outsiders aren't aren't very effective, I'd point to, I don't know, Donald Trump—who had the most dysfunctional administration in living memory. Like, try to think of something he accomplished and the top two things you think of are going to be one, appointing more Supreme Court justices in four years than Obama did in eight, which he literally could not have avoided if he wanted to. And second, uh, refusing to accept the results of every election he has ever lost thus helping to destroy many Americans faith in America. The only major non-COVID related legislation his administration passed was that one tax cut that you forgot about, and I'll remind you they had both houses of Congress to work with for the first two years. I think people who don't have experience with how governments work should probably get some of that experience before becoming the person in charge of the United States of America is all I'm saying.

In short, I should not run for President, but I would like to become the world's leading sock salesman. So if you're taking your awesome socks on an adventure this weekend, take a photo with them and tag at the good.store on social media or just DM them to us and Zoe and I will review your socks situation next week. If you want to help us find them more easily, you can use the hashtag RockYourSocks. Yes, hashtags. We are still doing that 'cause they're useful, okay?

John, I'll see you in August.