I got a request here from a major American print publication. "Dear Rush: For the Obama [Immaculate] Inauguration we are asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency. We would love to include you."...I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don't want them to succeed...So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails."...I don't care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.
For those of you living in a cave, Rush Limbaugh spoke those words on his radio show on January 16th, 2009, a Friday. I've never been one to take any of these talking heads seriously--from either side of the aisle-chosis. What people forget is that any of these windbags (Limbaugh, Maher, Coulter, Malkin, et al) only registers about 3 million followers at a time, and that's the higher end. In a country of 300,000,000 plus, we're basically talking about a stream of spit in the ocean.
The danger, of course, is when the mainstream media latches onto their content and takes it for a ride--a dangerous reporting occurrence that seems to happen all too frequently. And that's precisely what has happened--a clever move by Limbaugh, no doubt. The "it" question of the moment has now become:
Do you, or do you not, want him to fail?
Now, I've thought long and hard about this. I try and be as truthful with myself as possible, because you can't be anything to anyone until you can do it in a mirror. At the height of my anti-Bush sentiment, I don't ever remember thinking, "I want him to fail as President." I remember being angered by his policies. I remember being angered by his actions. But I can't think of a time where I wanted him to fail, because all bullshit aside, he was still the leader of our country.
His failure would have been our failure.
The neo's would respond to this by saying, "Well, you may have had that approach, but not everyone did. Plenty of people wanted him to fail." This may very well be true. But from a political group that wraps itself in the flag so often while sounding the call for patriotism--which has always seemed like telling people about your charitable works--it seems so hypocritical and dangerous to call for President Obama's failure.
Bobby Jindal is the reason why I bring this all up. This was a story posted earlier today on CNN's Political Ticker:
While his actual words are far less severe than the headline would have you believe, what I found more interesting was this nugget:
Jindal described the premise of the question--"Do you want the president to fail?"--as the "latest gotcha game" being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.
"Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraise attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."
Really? It's funny, because I seem to remember this same type of "gotcha game" being played by Republicans with anyone who dared stand up against The Iraq War, No Child Left Behind, The U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act, Guantanamo Bay, and a host of other failed Bush Administration policies.
What I also know is that it's Republican-style policies regarding finances and big business--and NOT President Bush's expenditures--that got us into the financial crisis that President Obama is currently trying to bail us out of.
So you know what, maybe Bobby Jindal is right.
I mean, after all, why shouldn't we trust a governor who turned down $98,000,000 in federal stimulus money to expand unemployment benefits, his rationale being that it would force an unfair tax on businesses when the funding ran out?
We should definitely ignore the fact that the move was obviously made with the debates he will be having in 3 years in mind, during which he will attack President's Obama's spending, and he won't be open to the retort of, "Well, Bobby, you sure didn't have a problem accepting the money then, did you?"
Why should people who need unemployment benefits during the worst financial crisis since The Great Depression be held in higher regard than political aspirations?
Republicans have a long, storied history of ignoring the poor--why stop now?
I know--what we should do is consolidate all of the wealth in the hands of a few select men, and wait for it to trickle down to the rest of us.
Because that worked so well.
It was a sad day in this country when it became apparent that partisan politics ruled the land. But with this talk of failure, and wishing it upon the President, or his policies, or his idelogy, or whatever, I can only envision darker times ahead. Vince Lombardi once said:
Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.
I can only hope that those who wish failure upon the President of the United States of America out of one side of their mouth, while singing their empty songs of patriotism out of the other, heed those words.
JS
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