WASHINGTON, D.C.  In a daring move presidential historians are calling the equivalent of Richard Nixon’s trip to China, President Obama today tapped a former Bain Capital employee to head a federal agency and promised to lower corporate taxes.

“My old lady wears Talbots–yours should too!”

“He’s been glued to the TV set watching the Republican debates for months,” said Vice President Joe Biden, shaking his head.  “I guess some of that stuff rubbed off on him.”

Former Bain employee Jeffrey Zients will serve as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, the agency whose projections of the costs of federal programs are ignored by Congress.  “Jeff is a really smart guy,” said Obama senior presidential advisor David Axelrod.  “He’s not like so many private equity types who are lured into religious cults by The Osmonds.”

The Osmonds: “Two more and we’ll have a Supreme Court!”

The National Economic Council said in separate but related move that the President will propose a reduction in the corporate tax rate.  “He’s serious about this,” said Gene Sperling, the White House’s director on the Council, the principal forum used by the President to incorporate the practice of voodoo into the nation’s fiscal affairs.  “If you play as much golf as he does, eventually you turn into a Republican and start wearing goofy-looking clothes on weekends.”

Sperling:  “Hey–I just work here.”

House Speaker John Boehner took credit for converting the President, saying it was a “guy date” to see “The Iron Lady,” a biopic about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher starring Merryl Streep, that convinced the President to adopt supply-side theory after years of struggling with his conscience and losing.  “We both gave it a thumbs-up,” said Boehner, “although it was a little light on the union-busting for my tastes.”

 
Boehner:  “I had him before we’d finished our first jumbo buttered popcorn!”

The First Couple has displayed flashes of GOP style in the past, with the First Lady shopping at Talbots and the acquisition of a Portugese water-dog, an ur-WASP pet.  “He’s got to look ahead to the time when he will be a very young ex-President,” said historian Arthur Walsh, author of “Calvin Coolidge: Wild and Crazy Budget-Balancer.”  “The waiting lists for some of the better country clubs are very long.”