Barthelme often takes an abnormal situation and presents it as if it were an everyday occurrence (like all the pets, plants, some relatives and even some classmates dying in an elementary school class in his story "The School"). Barthelme keeps his readers unbalanced, not sure of what is going on in the story.

In this case he portrays a contemporary America, where people vote without knowing why, where they hope (even expect) that their President will be some kind of savior who will save them from not knowing what they want or don’t want. Readers are baffled by the strangeness of the public’s aimless malaise and its frantic applause of its weird leader, as if the community could no longer take any responsibility and abdicated everything to this charismatic man. Barthelme forces us to face ambiguity and uncertainty; and also how irresponsible we are as democratic citizens who don’t work at it.