I will survive this too.

The pause

Ask him something

He will consider it for fifteen seconds. You will need to actually wait. That is the whole technique and it has never once failed him.

The technique

Eight ways to not answer

The pause is only the first one. He has seven more and he rotates them, so that no single room ever watches him use the same one twice.

• One — the pauseFifteen seconds of nothing. The room fills it for him, usually with a softer version of the question.
• Two — the earlier statement“I refer you to my earlier statement.” There was no earlier statement. Nobody has ever gone to look, because looking would suggest they had not been paying attention the first time.
• Three — securityAny question at all can be answered with security, and security cannot be discussed, which closes the loop neatly and in public.
• Four — the question about the question“That is an interesting way to phrase it.” The phrasing is now the subject. You will spend the rest of your allocation defending your own grammar.
• Five — the next questionTaken before you have finished this one, from somebody on the other side of the room, whom he selected before you stood up.
• Six — the correctionHe corrects one small detail inside your question, at length, and then sits back as though the correction had been the answer.
• Seven — the longer answerSix minutes of history, beginning considerably earlier than the event you asked about. By the fourth minute nobody in the room can remember the question, including you, including him.
• Eight — the complimentHe thanks you warmly for the question and does not answer it. You sit down feeling, against your own judgement, slightly pleased.

The survival record

Still here

Everything on this list was, at the time, definitely the end of him.

• A coalition that could not possibly holdheld
• An election he was certain to losewon
• A successor everyone had already congratulatedgone
• A commission with a very serious chairmanreported
• A Tuesdaysurvived

The successors

Everybody who was next

Each of them was, at the time, the obvious replacement. Several were congratulated. One had already chosen an office.

• The young one photographed at his shoulderambassador, somewhere cold
• The general the whole country respectedwriting a book
• The coalition partner who had the numbershad them on a Tuesday
• The rival who gave the speech of his lifethe speech is still very good
• The protégéthe word is now a warning
• The one who is definitely next this timedefinitely next for eleven years
• The commission's very serious chairmanretired, satisfied, unheeded

He has never removed any of them. They removed themselves, one at a time, by being the obvious replacement in a room where he was still sitting down.

The statement

Issued this morning, in full

Four hundred words, six sentences, and not one verb that commits to anything. The numbers in the margin are ours.

• 1“I have seen the reports” is not “the reports are true” and is not “the reports are false”. It is the only sentence in the statement that could not be contradicted by anything.
• 2Announcing that you are leaving no room for doubt is not the same as leaving no room for doubt, and takes up room that could have held a fact.
• 3He does not say what he understands. Two words, entirely empty, and the room nods.
• 4Technique number two. No earlier statement has been located. The press office has been asked and has referred the question to the statement.
• 5The passive voice is doing the heaviest lifting in the document. Mistakes were made by nobody, at no point, on their own.
• 6The one active clause in four hundred words, and it is about him staying.

This is an invented statement by an invented baboon. It is not a quotation from anybody real and it describes no real event. What it is copying is a shape, and the shape is the joke.

The coalition

The ones behind him

• Bezalel the BaboonShouts one word. Has never needed a second.
• Itamar the MandrillWants a fence around it. Around what is negotiable.
• Benny the BonoboThe moderate. Nods. Has never finished a sentence in the affirmative or the negative.
• The GeneralsA row of gorillas in uniform who do not blink. Nobody has established whether they can.

The international reactions

What the world's committees produced instead

Three bodies, three procedures, and to date not one ruling. This is what institutional patience looks like from the outside, forever.

• The Hague Tribunal ChimpsA bench of chimpanzees in borrowed togas. Between them they have produced a filing cabinet's worth of procedure and no verdict. The session is adjourned. The session reconvenes. The session is adjourned.
• The UN OrangutansSlow, correct, and exhausted. They draft a resolution, translate it into six languages, and file it somewhere nobody with power reads it.
• The American ElephantCalls him “an old friend” on Monday and “a complicated situation” by Thursday, and has never once explained the difference.

No verdict is reached by anybody in this section, on this page, about anybody. That is also the joke — invented primates, invented committees, an invented elephant on the phone, and no claim about any real person or real proceeding.

The polls

Institutes that keep asking anyway

Every institute below is invented, every respondent is invented, and every number is invented on purpose — arithmetic that could not survive contact with an actual electorate. That is the joke, not a claim.

• The Institute for Asking Him Again62% disapprove, 61% would still vote for him tomorrow. Nobody on staff will explain the overlap out loud.
• The Coalition's Own Internal Poll108% approval. Bezalel insisted on being counted twice and nobody in the room had the nerve to stop him.
• The National Survey of People Who Picked Up the PhoneSample size: four. Margin of error: the entire result. Published anyway, on schedule, in bold.
• The Thirty-Year UndecidedsA steady 40%, unmoved since the first survey, now polled about their grandchildren instead.
• The Exit Poll That Never ExitsFielded outside a building he has not yet left. Field team still there. Field team still getting paid.

Invented institutes, invented baboons, invented arithmetic. No real polling organisation, no real election and no real approval rating appears anywhere on this page.