Chapter three of America (the book), is entitled The President: King of Democracy. The chapter is set by a picture and quote by ex-president Richard M. Nixon, "[expletive deleted]". The book is designed to be a spoof of textbooks used in classrooms across the nation. The book is entirely farcical in nature, but does an decent job of outlining some of the main responsibilities and frustrations of being president. The book's textbook-like formatting gives room in the side columns for images and quotes which are almost always of a fabricated and comedic nature, the use of comic footnotes is also extremely common. The chapter focuses on the job of the president as being both powerful and full of perks, as well as a routinely hated public figure and all purpose scapegoat. The chapter has a very liberal spin and one of the repeating jokes involves the president's inability to actually make laws, and the vice president's lack of responsibility for well... pretty much anything. As the book states in a mock letter to the newly elected VP "Congratulations on being from a region geographically disparate from that of the president. Well done!" The book contains numerous activities that serve as satirical parallels of the pointless activities in school books, such as "Ranking the presidents", "The cabinet: yes men of freedom", "Presidential nicknames", and "The Presidential Pet Challenge". The chapter includes run downs on the modern responsibilities of the president such as national security (namely the ability to declare war by calling it a "police action", or "just not telling anyone"), Legislative Power (Threatening, begging, and cajoling congressmen into making laws), and other miscellaneous responsibilities including bringing donuts to cabinet meetings. The publication is full of hilarious faux editorials written by comedians like Stephen Colbert and Ed Helms. For a book written by a room full of twenty writers in about two weeks, it has an unexpected amount of depth (at least as far as the satire goes), and balances ridiculousness with enough political history and comedic truth to pass for a fairly enlightening, yet modernly pessimistic read.
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