Imagine Getting into a Cab and Realizing Your Driver Was the President

You overslept on the very morning you have that very important appointment.  Instead of navigating the subway, you stick your hand in the air and hope the next cab has vacancy.  When it stops, you slide into the weathered seats, tell the driver your destination, and begin to absent mindedly flip through your e-mails.  But, is that a familiar face in the rear view mirror?  Could it be?  Yep.  The man taking you around town, honking at traffic, and charging you forty cents per mile is none other than President Obama.

No, that didn’t happen in America.  However, the Norwegian prime minister did just that:

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg pulled off a stunt recently that many of his fellow democratically elected leaders would likely be too scared to carry out: He tried to mingle with the people. In what he described as an effort to hear from real Norwegians, Stoltenberg dressed up as a taxi driver and spent an afternoon driving people around Oslo. He didn’t quite manage to remain incognito though. Pretty much all his passengers realized sooner or later who their driver was, despite the sunglasses and uniform. Still, from the short video posted online it seems like lively discussions did emerge, even if the passengers knew who they were talking to. One elderly woman says she’s lucky he was her driver because she “wanted to send a letter.”

The media stunt certainly makes the prime minister seem like friendly guy, with one woman even making fun of his driving. “Your driving isn’t exactly the best I’ve seen,” she said.

I regret that this video footage of the scene is not in English, but seeing the delight on his passengers’ faces as they realize their driver’s identity make it worth a quick watch:

This article first appeared here on National Review.

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