Direct from The Onion. America's Finest News Source WASHINGTON—In preparation for the traditional task of welcoming his successor to the Oval Office, outgoing president George W. Bush canceled all his appointments and press conferences Monday so he could spend the day outfitting his desk with a series of traps, gags, and hair-trigger switches. "Oh, man, is he gonna get it," the president said after rearranging the letters on his computer keyboard and supergluing the direct-line-to-the-Pentagon telephone to its base. "If the 44th president is anything like me, he'll grab this can of peanuts to snack on when he's talking to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and when he does—bam! Right in his face!"
Taking his place in a long history of executive office shenanigans that began with President Martin Van Buren's famous sneezing-in-Jackson's-coffee prank of 1837, Bush carefully drafted his personal letter to the next president on White House stationery, filled the envelope with glitter, and then used rubber cement to secure the letter to the bottom of his desk's right-hand drawer.
In what may turn out to be his greatest presidential prank, Bush also has spent the previous eight years damaging the American economy beyond repair and bogging the country down in an unwinnable war with a sovereign Middle Eastern nation.