Fred and I sat at a cocktail bar on the Champs Elysées in Paris talking with Napoléon. He had agreed to a four hundred thousand dollar fee to come back from hiding and talk to us about his one hundred days. Our funding was sponsored by anonymous Wall Street backers.

“Mr. Napoléon, thank you for being here. It’s a pleasure seeing you again after we dumped our history books.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Napoléon said. “It’s pretty boring up there in St. Héléna. This comeback gave me the opportunity to frolic with Robert Branson on one of his Virgin Islands. As you know from history, I adore virgins. But I loved Josephine.”

Virgin and Josephine

“We do remember that, your highness”, Fred said. “We also remember you were beaten by the Russians in 1812 and sent to St. Elba. You know we still have problems with the Russians. Our opposition party says they meddled in our recent elections. What’s your view?”

“Meddling in someone else’s business has been Russia’s prime sport during the centuries. Nothing new. Remember Raspoutin? It surprised me that your opposition party kept their doors wide open for them to walk in and take all those pictures and listening in.” 

“What would you have done?” I asked.

“I can’t speak for your opposition party but we solved these issues by marrying a Russian princess. Or for your opposition leader having a liaison with a Russian prince. She could have prevented all that. I heard Mr. Putin was available. He has a load of testosterone. Didn’t she give him half of your uranium? That’s a nice dowry.”

“But the opposition party is accusing the other party that it was their good relations with the Russians that made them lose the elections, ” Fred explained.

“I was also told that the losing party had fireworks planned accompanied by Tchaikowsky’s 1812 overture. That’s a major Russian piece of music and composed after they beat me. Mr. Putin may have put a stop to the music because he didn’t want to publicize his laison with the leader of  the opposition party. Maybe that’s why they blame the other party now.”

“You know there’s much talk about the first one hundred days in American politics,” Fred said.

“So I’ve heard. My one hundred days coming from St. Elba seem to have gone viral once more. But as usual the American media gets it backwards. My one hundred days came at the end of my illustrious career.”

“Why do you think that 200 hundred years later this is still so important?” Fred asked.

“Because I didn’t achieve anything in those days. You remember I had my Waterloo.”

“But here in the US they want politicians to achieve everything in their first one hundred days. All the media are making that their sole news story,” I said.

“It only shows that in two hundred years you guys have learned nothing,” Napoléon said. “My final one hundred days were only meant to firm up a legacy to be remembered. As you see, I’m still remembered.”

“But here they want a list of major achievements,” Fred tried to clarify.

“Oh, I had achievements all right. I first beat the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians. Then Wellington got me because I suffered from hemorrhoids in my saddle.”

“So what do you think of our first one hundred days?” I asked.

“The concept has been bastardized. Except warfare, you shouldn’t achieve anything serious in those days. What would you have to show for in the next one hundred days? And the next? All you have to do is sit quiet and blame your opponents for making your country look bad.”

“You think we look bad?” Fred asked.

“You sure do. Everybody in the world wants Obama back. He talked but did nothing, that’s good politics.”

“But when the monarchy took over, they banned you to St. Helena,” I recalled. “And nobody wanted you back.”

“I went there on sick leave,” Napoléon explained. “Then my premiums went through the roof, so I couldn’t pay for them anymore. Otherwise, I would’ve been back again. To fix Napoléoncare.”

“Couldn’t you use your Veterans Care? As the Commander in Chief?” Fred asked.

“I would have to ride a horse for forty kilometers before reaching a hospital or doctor. I couldn’t because of my hemorrhoids. And they couldn’t come to me because they were too busy taking care of the dying and the burying. After two hundred years, you still have the same problem in the US.”

“It seems hard to get things done in one hundred days,” Fred philosophized.

“You said it,” Napoléon agreed. “The previous reign in France gave me a mess! Think of my achievements in the fifteen-some years of my reign! Catholic religion reinstated; monks were no longer suppressed; people got their land back; I reinstated law and order, created the Napoleonic laws and established a Constitution; I modernized education and got rid of common core; I revitalized the sluggish economy and improved agriculture; I sanitized taxation, and rebuilt the military! I made France great again. Vive la France!”

“That’s impressive,” Fred said. “Did you copy that from the Trump Administration?”

“You got your timeline wrong. The Trump Administration copied it from me.”

“How did you do all that?” I asked

“Executive orders, my friend. If they weren’t executed, I executed the non-executors.”

“I wish we had that system here,” Fred said. “Too many chefs in the kitchen and half of them don’t even know how to cook a simple omelet without breaking eggs.”

“Do you think America needs a border wall?” I asked.

“I solved that differently. I conquered my neighbors left and right and made them my soldiers. That’s how I got rid of them.”

“What’s your advice to America now?”

“Ask your Democrats to hire me. They need a leader. At four hundred thousand dollars a consultation I’m cheap.”