Presidential Job Application Question #7 (with my answer): Tell us a joke.

Slate’s John Dickerson recently published a piece entitled:

The Presidential Job Application: Seven questions we should ask anyone who wants to become President.

Over the course of the next seven days, I plan on completing Dickerson’s application by answering each of the questions. I’ve always wanted to be President, so perhaps my answers will be so impressive that a grassroots campaign supporting my candidacy will ignite.

Answers to previous questions:

• Question #1: What’s the biggest crisis you’ve faced in your professional life and how did you handle it? 
• Question #2: What’s the biggest personal crisis you’ve faced and how did you handle it?
• Question #3: What’s your greatest political triumph?
• Question #4: What’s your greatest governing triumph?
• Question #5: What historical presidential moment tells us the most about your vision of the office?
• Question #6: What historical presidential moment tells us the most about your vision of the office?

Question #7: Tell us a joke.

If my job were to make someone laugh, I would be much more inclined to tell a story about a moment from my life rather than a joke, and not only would it bring humor to the moment, but it would also reveal something about me in the process.

But if Dickerson wants the blunt force trauma that is a joke, here goes:

“Dyslexic man walks into a bra.”

I like this joke for three reasons:

1. It deals with language: the inversion of letters in a word. It opens the door to additional literary jokes from the listener. 
2. It also is slightly sexual in nature without being at all vulgar.  
3. It makes about half the people who hear this joke tilt their heads, scrunch their eyebrows, and experience a couple seconds of cognitive dissonance. I love watching that moment: The move from confusion to realization.