President BS

I see by the Wall Street Journal that the President departed from his prepared State of the Union text at least once--to refer to "the Democratic majority" as "the Democrat majority." My God, they just can't help themselves, can they? He's tickling 28 percent, he's got majorities against him on both sides, he's really desperate for anything, anything to add a patina of gravitas to the debacle that is his Presidency--and he indulges himself by throwing it away on a towel-snapping locker room cheap shot.

I don't know--but it would be interesting to know--who came up with the idea that it would be funny ha-ha to take this bit of schoolyard dissery and turn it into a canon of Republican conformity. Best way I remember it was some time around the time of the Gingrich revolution, and I have to concede it was a pretty good idea at the time. It added just a frisson of macho swagger to set the troop's blood running, without risking anything so vulgar or dangerous as actually stuffing castor oil down somebody's throat. And Dems never did figure out how to handle it: they feared that any attempt at response would smack of prissiness or thin skin. But as James Carvell so well understands, not to respond is taken a sign of weakness which just angries up the blood. So you're stuck either way.

But you know what? It's old. Old not in the sense of "venerable," or even "traditional" but old in the sense of "lame." It's become an index of the bankruptcy of the old guard. They're a busted flush at this point, an empty suit, and it shows. They've lost the war--no, they've lost two or three or wars, in the sense that every time they redefine the war, they go ahead and lose that one too. They've been exposed over and over as incoherent frauds on domestic policy, and they've given every evidence that they don't understand the simple arithmetic of budget management at all. They've got nothing left in their hand but a piece of shopworn faux bullying.

Well you know what, kiddies? Despite appearances, politics is not tetherball. It isn't even water polo or soccer. It's a desperately serious business, and our very lives depend on it. You've made a right royal mess of things, and it is time to pay. Which means we need some grownups at the table: some people who have at least a beginning sense of the pickle we are in, together with the sense of responsibility (saying nothing of the energy and, dare one hope for it, the wisdom) to work with other people of good will to try to pull some of these grenade-sized chestnuts out of the fire. Do that--even hint at doing that, I don't ask for much--hint at doing that, and I'll give the President back the last two letters of his name.