6 Other Nations Follow U.S. Lead, Selecting New, Inexperienced Leaders

The choices of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin as Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates have inspired at least six other nations to abandon experience as a qualification for leadership, according to press reports.

France, Russia, Germany, Iran, China, and Fiji have all voted their leaders out of office, seen their leaders resign in the wake of the Obama and Palin nominations, or, in the case of Russia, shot them in purges, bringing to the fore a new generation of inexperienced, unproven, and utterly unqualified leaders.

France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who has held political office since 1983, was replaced as President by a young, unidentified maker of crepes at an outdoor food stand on the Left Bank who “once entered the National Assembly building because he needed a bathroom,” according to the Dissociated Press.

Vladimir Putin of Russia was shot to death in a purge and will be replaced by 22-year-old Moscow taxi driver Evgeny Brodkin, who “knows many of the best parking spaces in and around the Kremlin,” according to the Russian news service TASS.

Germany’s first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, who possesses a doctorate in physics and has been serving in the German government since the early 1990s, today resigned her office in favor of a young Munich waitress/free verse poet who “toured the White House on a visit to the United States when she was 9, with her family, but doesn’t remember much about it, except that it was in fact white in color,” according to reports.

Iran has turned over its government and nuclear weapons program to a 34-year-old information technology worker “with extensive background in downloading music and video and is a really nice guy,” according to press reports.

China’s entire generation of leadership resigned, placing in power a 19-year-old apprentice pig farmer from Ulan Bator who “wanted to come to the Beijing Olympics but didn’t want to be away from his pigs for that long,” according to a Chinese government spokesman. “He will be permitted to bring his pigs to Beijing, however.”

The military government of Fiji, which took over the island nation in a 2006 coup, is resigning to devote the rest of the summer to “surfing, mostly,” according to a guy in Fiji somewhere, and will be ruled for the next four years by that same guy.

In other news, United Airlines, in a move to save money, will allow passengers to fly jumbo jets; the Mayo Clinic will permit patients to opt for a lower-cost do-it-yourself brain surgery; and the nation of Colombia will allow visitors to process their own cocaine, for their personal use or for resale in the United States.

“Experience isn’t everything,” Republican Presidential candidate John McCain told a hastily assembled Pittsburgh press conference. “In fact, in today’s world, it’s a handicap. That’s why I chose Sarah Palin.”