Willard M. Romney: This is easy. If Mitt wins the GOP nomination and the general election, he’ll sell off all the Soul’s assets. Whatever remains of the Soul after that, he’ll trade to the Devil for future considerations.

Barack Obama: Obama seems almost certain to win the Democratic party nomination for president and, given the sudden carnivorous turn the Republicans have taken, only slightly less certain to win the general election.

If he does win, he’ll probably lodge the Soul in comfort at Camp David, careful to keep it away from newspapers and the internet—what if the Soul developed a taste for news or porn on the president’s watch? We don’t need another custody battle so soon—and promise it a job in a year or two, maybe three, four tops. He’ll trot it out for feel-good state functions involving one-legged champion wrestlers or universally beloved school teachers or the opening of a solar panel manufacturing facility, and fit it with a pair of custom-made blinders to wear on those occasions when the president is about to do something truly depraved, like strike a deal with Republicans to reduce Medicare benefits or blow up a bunch of third-world women and kids for no good reason. Because there are some things you don’t want the Soul of America to see, for the good of us all.

Ron Paul: If Ron Paul wins the battle for the Soul of America, the Soul is pretty much on its own and will likely end up as a massively pregnant stoner panhandling on a street corner and passing out fliers warning against an impending assault by forces of the outlawed Federal Reserve.

Vote wisely, vote well and vote often.

We have not a single prominent political figure to the left of your average John Birch Society aficionado speaking out against eternal war and our increasingly predatory national security state. People who oppose those sorts of things are desperately parched. The overwhelming number of Obama supporters glide past these issues as though they don’t exist; once Paul is off stage again, you will not hear a whisper of anti-imperial criticism from them aimed at the president. And that is precisely why those outraged liberals want him off stage again, and want any attention or praise paid his rhetoric in the meanwhile to be seen as beyond the pale.

Barack Obama believes the national security state and the American military empire are good and valuable things. He likes them. He uses them enthusiastically. Ron Paul believes all sorts of weird and unsavory shit, but he doesn’t believe that the national security state and the American military empire are good and valuable things. You don’t want Ron Paul siphoning off liberal/left enthusiasm? Then take those issues away from him and make them your own; they are, after all, progressive bread and butter issues. Can’t, though, can you?

(Obama also used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance lecture to mount a stirring defense of the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, which makes him not only an imperialist and authoritarian but an enormous asshole as well. And doesn’t say a lot for the Nobel selection committee either. But that’s another story.)

Balancing out Johnson’s work on behalf of financial pirates and purveyors of environmental mayhem is his marriage to Michelle Norris, who must be liberal because she works at NPR.

Well. Not exactly her president. She’s Canadian, although also Floridian. Hot Sun Bakes Canadian Brain. In the end we agreed that when Rick Perry invades Iran in five years after taking office by winning 45% of the popular vote, I will deserve to be drafted and sent off to fight and presumably die in that war because I think Democrats should pursue big projects like universal health care, the cramming of which down American throats led George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Damn you, Harry Truman!

(Too, this means America will lose because if the time comes when I’m 1) drafted and 2) expected to actually fight, that will be the time when our Great Country is dead on its feet.)

This synopsis is much, much closer to how the actual discussion went than it is to a caricature of the actual discussion, although it is several days shorter than the real thing. Along the way I learned how people like me—loud-mouthed unreasoning lefties—cost Democrats the 2010 midterm elections even though though they didn’t. Because they must have! Even though independents who went for Democrats by nearly 20 points in the 2006 midterms went for Republicans by nearly 20 points in the 2010 midterms because, well, Obama. And Democrats. But a 40-point swing in a third of the electorate was not the issue; it was me. Me! Fuck! What was I thinking!

Okay. Well. Canadians, whattayagonnado.

Just kidding. Very nice people. Don’t do well in hot climates, though.

One good thing about Obama, he’s not making up crazy bullshit about Iran the way the Bushies did about Iraq. So the war really will be Rick Perry’s fault. My fault.

Where are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney living these days, anyway? Shouldn’t we be slapping sanctions on those joints for harboring war criminals? Freezing assets? Travel sanctions for top officials? Preventing their sporting franchises from competing with those in other, less benighted locales?

Light up the gated entrance at Preston Hollow with Hellfire missiles for a few nights and pretty soon a group of masked billionaires will be dropping a trussed-up W out in the street under a white flag. There is precedent!

Cheney, though: I think we all know how that will end if his neighbors try to bring him in alive. First one through the door takes a shotgun to the face.

Do the Canadians deserve Obama? Sure: they elected Stephen Harper, so their standards obviously aren’t what they used to be. And evidently most of them went home afterward and never came out to vote again. It’s possible they won’t even notice we sent Obama up there, especially if we time it for Hockey Night in Canada. At least until they start getting notices from Canada Revenue that they have to buy Aetna health insurance or else.

If they don’t notice we sent him we can’t every well demand anyone in return, but Tommy Douglas is deader’n Nixon so who cares anyway? Maybe we can work out a three-way deal to get Lula from Brazil, since he’s a free agent now. Meanwhile, Biden can hold down the fort here with one foot tied behind his mouth.