House of Eratosthenes

Mitch McConnell is in bed with Wall Street “movers and shakers” — and is fronting “cynical and deceptive” arguments on their behalf.

John Boehner is a health care Chicken Little to be mocked for predicting Armageddon if the Democrats’ reform bill passed.

Sarah Palin can be ignored on arms control because she’s “not exactly an expert on nuclear issues.”

And Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are just a “troublesome” twosome spreading “vitriol.”

Democratic oppo research? Comments from Daily Kos?

No, this is your president speaking.

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal:

Smart Aleck-in-Chief?
There may be good reasons for Obama to go negative, but doing so could wreck his presidency.

Here’s a quiz: For which of the following reasons is the 44th president of the United States bad-mouthing Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, bankers, mine operators, insurers, Glenn Beck, the tea party, the Supreme Court and whoever he hammers as we go to press:

a) He’s rallying his base.

b) He’s rallying the Democrats’ base (one overlaps but does not equal the other).

c) He’s changing the subject from 9% unemployment.

d) To reverse his sinking approval ratings.

e) It’s what Saul Alinsky would do.

f) It’s what Barack Obama likes to do.

Astute readers instantly saw that the answer is, all of the above.

Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, a target of Obamian invective, are calling it conduct unbecoming a president. They are right. Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Ford didn’t do it. People assume the hyperpolitical Bill Clinton did it, but if memory serves, his public persona was presidential to a fault, even as he brimmed with Vesuvian anger.

Does this hurt His ability to preside? Is it bad for the country? Does it manifest an unwillingness, and perhaps an inability, to do the job we are supposed to have elected Him to do?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

What’s missing is this: The notion that grappling with the situation at hand, turning a bad situation into a good one, is Priority #1. The Alinsky politics are incompatible with that, and His Eminence is — oh, you’re going to have to forgive me for what comes next, I simply cannot resist — bitterly clinging to Saul Alinsky’s book. ++smirk++

We’ll survive this, but only the way you survive a bad hangover, or the severe dehydration of three days trapped in a locked suitcase. We won’t be whole the instant it’s over. We’ll need time to recuperate.

Henninger mentions Reagan. Reagan made it his business to stir the puddin’ only when he had something thoughtful to say. I remember clearly Reagan’s first year in office. He certainly did have his share of critics, especially for a nearly-70-year-old man who went through surgery to remove a bullet an inch from his heart.

But he stuck to business. And what you very rarely hear anyone mention is that the much-discussed “energy crisis,” with all of the gas lines winding ’round the block, the spiking power bills, the winter heating oil crises, this & that…mysteriously came to an end. Oh that’s right, isn’t it? It’s a seventies thing and not an eighties thing. How come that is?

Because government really doesn’t have that much power to make things better. Unless it can get out of the way…and in 1981, it had a lot of getting-out-of-the-way to do. Reagan stuck to the job, and didn’t lower himself into a shouting match with his critics.

Sarah Palin, the woman who’s supposed to be so dismally unqualified for the Presidency, is made from much the same mold. She makes her points when she has something thoughtful to say, when it’s more than a one-liner. Yes, she often starts with some witty catchphrase…which is probably borrowed. And then she posts the resulting three paragraphs on Facebook, which I take less than seriously. I see it as the “Hello Kitty” of blogging. But the things she has to say, are substantial things. Ad hom is not part of the discussion, in fact she very rarely addresses an attack directly — only when the attack was so egregious, that ignoring it is out of the question. Jokes about her daughter being molested by a baseball player for example.

Barack Obama, it seems, is never going to ascend to this level of maturity — the maturity that has to do with taking on weighty problems, along with the heavy thinking that must swirl around them, head-on. There’s always another round of “I’m better than that guy over there” that must be played.

For the good of the country, this must be made into an issue. It might not teach Holy Man what He needs to learn, but it’s a real problem with how this nation is being governed, and will be governed in the near future. If those in power won’t be dealing with the issue, it falls to the electorate to deal with it. We need some grown-ups in there.

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President’s PetulanceThursday, April 29th, 2010

President’s Petulance
Thursday, April 29th, 2010