「故事·听力」I Became A President By Spreading Fake News

I Became A President By Spreading Fake News

Hi! My name is Dean. And now I will tell you how I became a president when I was only sixteen years old.

I have a dream. A huge dream. When I turn thirty-five I will become the President of the United States! Remember my words!

And I've worked toward my dream from my early childhood. You see, my father is very into politics. For as long as I can remember he's always followed all the elections – from the president to the congressmen, senators and governors. When there are no elections, he watches political debates on TV and discusses them with his friends. I was also always into it, and maybe that’s why I realized very early in life that I wanted to choose the path of politics.

My political career started when I had just graduated from middle school and entered high school – I enlisted in my school's Student Council. I knew that a politician was judged not only by his deeds, but also by his looks and I started to create an image. Hmmm, you know, I wore business suits and was always very clean with perfectly kept hair. I was pretty talkative and tried to speak eloquently – I read many books with practical advice regarding public speaking. My new school friends teased me at first but soon they stopped. I guess they just got used to me being like that. After all, interest in politics and social work is no worse than an aspiration to become a successful video blogger spending days and nights in the net.

But nonetheless, I lacked really close friends. With one exception – a girl named Sarah. We met while we were both serving on the Student Council which we joined practically at the same time. Sarah favored my interests, partly because we shared them. She was not at all interested in common “girly” things. She was clever and witty far beyond her years so she has realized her potential in school community service. We only differed in one thing – Sarah never had a Big Dream, she just took pleasure in working.

I spent two years of high school serving on the Student Council. And when the time to elect a new School President came, I decided to run for it. Why not? I had worked in almost every department of the Council. I worked as a journalist for the school newspaper, writing articles about social life at school, interviewing the most interesting school personalities. I was good at it, but it was not what I was aiming for, I just took this job in order to become popular and well-known at school. For the same reasons I also took an active part in the organization of various events – from excursions to school dances. I had some experience where I was responsible for a school budget but this experience wasn't all that pleasant so I decided to… ahem… remain silent about this subject in my election campaign. But, in general, there was no job on the committee that I had not touched.

So I was pretty confident in my success. All my whole high school knew was “This Crazy Dean, who was going to become a President” and there were, frankly speaking, no other decent candidates. Before… before my friend Sarah decided to run for the same office. I was very surprised and asked her for an explanation. Sarah told me that she simply wanted to take part in such an interesting event, but that she was certain I would win this campaign and she, in turn, would vote for me. She even reminded me that without a serious opposition there was no real politician. And well, I could not object.

And so the election campaign began! Very soon after, the process stopped being easy and fun for me. As it turned out, Sarah is very popular and loved at school. VERY! LOVED! All the teachers and graduates from the committee spoke about how active Sarah was and what an excellent job she has done! And she was never as officious as I was. So she looked more and more attractive for the electorate… especially against my background.

My ratings started to fall. I ran my legs off organizing my campaign while Sarah did literally NOTHING! The students formed a support group, taking her campaign into their own hands. I was losing my courage as I watched my chances to win fade. I had to do something!

And so I decided to use a dirty political instrument. Yes, I realized what I was doing, but it was necessary. I had found a way to defile my friend in the face of her electorate.

The thing is that Sarah was dating a former School President. He had already graduated and gone to college so now they had a long distance relationship. And it was a secret shared with just a couple of Sarah’s close friends and me. But I had found a way to secretly spread this information among the students...