One fine sunny day President Barack Obama was sitting behind his desk studiously writing on some envelopes when Vice President Joe Biden walked in.

“What's up big dawg,” quipped the veep.
“Oh, hi Joe. I'm just working on my three letters,” replied the President.

Joe took a step back and looked around before closing the door to the oval office, “you mean it's not an urban legend? Bush really left you three letters in the desk? And you went through all of them?”

Obama leaned back in his chair and tilted his head a little to the left. He wasn't sure how he should respond to the question. After a few minutes of thought he motioned Joe to come on over.

“It's all true Joe. Bush left me three letters in this desk, and over time, I have been opening them.” Obama took a moment to show the three envelopes he had just sealed. They were numbered from one to three and bore no other distinguishing marks except for the seal of the President of the United States.

“But, you can't be done with all three already, can you,” asked Joe?

“Do you remember when we first came into office Joe and we were pushing the stimulus bill? That was when I opened the first letter. It was very clear and to the point. It told me to blame the first major crisis of my administration on Bush, the former President.”

Joe nodded his head and scratched his chin, “I remember that. We blamed all the economic problems on Bush back then didn't we? What with TARP and all it certainly wasn't hard! If memory serves me right didn't we blame Bush for a lot of things?”

“I'll get to that,” replied the President.

“After stimulus went through we had a good ride for a while. Then we started getting all that flack about Gitmo not being closed yet. I knew I couldn't blame Bush for that because I had already signed an Executive Order to close the place down. So, I did the only thing I could do, I opened the next letter. This time it said to blame Congress. I couldn't believe my luck! It was perfect and the Republicans even helped by being so vocal about not closing Gitmo!”

Joe smiled that knowing smile and chuckled quietly, “yeah, they did play along rather well, didn't they!” After an extra moment or two to savor the memory Joe turned back to the President, “when did you open the third letter?”

Obama turned in his chair and stood up. He walked over towards Joe and put his hand on his shoulder. “I don't really remember when I opened the third letter and it didn't really matter because the third letter was useless, all it said was to write three letters!”

Joe looked a little shocked when Obama told him this. Seeing the shock Obama smiled and walked back over to his desk. He picked up the letters and waved them in the air for Joe to see before dropping them into a drawer.

“Look Joe, we both know that Bush was no where near as smart as I am so I wrote three improved letters. I expanded on the first one to include not just blaming Bush but to include spreading the blame to anyone hired by his administration whether they still work in the government or not. I expanded the second letter to include placing blame not just on Republicans in congress but also those teabaggers and Fox News. All I have to do is blame Fox News and the rest of the media believes it to be true!”

“What about the third letter,” inquired Joe with a nervous tone in his voice?

“Oh that one? I changed it from 'write three letters' to 'buy three envelopes'.”