The Palin Mistake, the Putin Solution

John McCain was straightening his underwear when Sarah Palin walked into the room. Ever since winning the election in November, he’d switched his preference in underwear from briefs to boxers. Boxers made him young, his wife had told him a week after the results were in. The youngsters of America were wearing boxers, and, in order to maintain at least an air of youthfulness, McCain decided his wife was right. So the next day he’d sent a servant out to the marketplace (a local Macy’s) with orders to select several pairs of “fancy, stylish, hip” boxer shorts.

“Ms. Palin,” he said, stiffening his posture, “what can I do for you?” The problem with boxer shorts was their tendency to become stuffed in places he didn’t much care for anything to be stuffed. The extra material became bunched between his legs and his slacks. They rode up into his butt, making him prone to anxiety and edgy.

I like the new John McCain, his wife had said as he stood before her that first evening, when the boxer shorts had arrived. Clad only in his new undies, McCain had done a twirl for his wife. She had clapped, bouncing up and down on the bed, excited to have a young husband again. They make you youthful, she kept saying.

“John,” Palin said, fluffing her hair. She was blushing. She bit her fingernail. “I made a mistake.” She sat in a chair, mimicking her commander-in-chief. “Oopsie. Right? But mistakes do happen, I mean, that’s what we’re here fer.”

McCain stared at her, somewhere below her chin, but just above her bellybutton. “What kind of mistake?” he finally said. He hit a button on the phone console. “Bring me my jar of pickles,” he shouted.

“Well, ya know, I’ll just come right out with it. You’re a straight-shooter, Maverick, so I’m gonna come right on out with it.” She winced. “It seems I kinda pissed off Puttin.”

“Who?” McCain asked, leaning forward.

“Puttin.”

“Putin?”

“Oh, yah,” she said, nodding her head. “Putin.” Sarah Palin twirled her hair. “Oh yah, I did. You see, well, he called fer ya, John, and you were getting yer massage, and he wasn’t very nice on the phone. Ya see, in Alaska, people are nice to—”

“What’d you tell him?” McCain frowned.

“Oh, ya know, just about what I thought of them sneaky Russians. It was more of a joke, ya know, than anything, about Russians bein sneaky, but he hung up on me.” After a moment of silence, she said, “Rude of him, huh?”

John McCain held his chin in silence as Sarah Palin squirmed on her seat, unable to find a comfortable position. A knock at the door made her jump.

“Your pickles, my lord,” came a voice from the other side. A servant entered and set a jar of pickles on McCain’s desk. The servant opened the jar with a pop, pulled out a pickle, cupped a hand to catch any drops of pickle juice that threatened to fall to the floor, and carefully inserted the end into McCain’s open mouth.

Audibly crunching on pickle, McCain looked at Palin. Through a mouthful, the Maverick spoke. “You know what you’ve gotta do now, don’t you?”

“I spose so, John,” Palin said. “I spose so.”

**

“Does you vant a cigarette?” Putin asked as Palin rolled to the other side of the bed. He lit up one and offered it to her, but she shook her head. Sarah Palin pulled the blankets up to her chest. She was breathing heavily.

“Whoo! That was a doozy. Whooey! That was like a shot of your famous Russian vodka.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Dontcha know that smoke is bad fer your lungs? It’s a sin, too, ya know, to do yourself bodily harm.”

“Vhat about what we just do?” Putin waved a hand, holding the cigarette. “Wasn’t that sin too?”

“Oh,” Palin said, wiping sweat from her forehead. “That was anything but sinful.”

**

The Maverick was pleased to announce in his State of the Union address that relations with Russia were superb; better than they’d ever been. And he couldn’t thank enough his Vice President, for her tact and absolute hands-on approach, at bringing the largest, most at odds nations to peaceful agreement.

“And there were some,” McCain was careful to say in his speech, as he surreptitiously adjusted his underwear behind the podium, “that scoffed at my VP and her lack of foreign experience. I think she’s buried that criticism and made those naysayers into fools.”

And, of course, at the end of the speech, he “God-Blessed” America.