It used to feel weird every time the President apologized to you for something he had done. It's not like you thought it was sincere or meaningful. In fact it made you angry. You would answer with an insult, he'd insult you back, and after some minutes of that you would, strangely enough, feel better.

He was an asshole and a bastard, for sure, somebody who had called you all that and worse, and, if you wanted to think about it, not somebody who had done a lot of things you would have wanted a President to do. The other candidate you had never talked with in your life.

So you chose re-election, like seventy percent of the other voters, and when you came back home and the small speaker in the kitchen thanked you by name in the same voice you had talked with about nothing and everything so many times, it felt good. Familiar.

Not that you would ever tell him that. But it was comforting to think he knew anyway.