Charlie Pierce: In Which MoDo Loses A Fight With James Madison

[Mass]

The great Charlie Pierce takes down the latest Maureen Dowd's column, where she still thinks Obama lives in the frame of a TV fiction, this time the Borgia.

In Which MoDo Loses A Fight With James Madison

Noted sprawler-across-staircases Maureen Dowd has fashioned herself another Chronic Ward of a newspaper column today on her now-regular theme of what a wimpety-wimp-wimp Barry Obama is, and why she never should have let him take her to prom instead of the hunky Andrew Shepherd from The American President who, while admittedly fictional, never would take this guff from actual human beings like John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Louie Gohmert, to which latter we give the benefit of a considerable doubt on this score. From the available evidence (again), and for all the relevance her insights have on what's actually going on in American politics, Dowd once again seems to be writing from an assisted-living facility on the far side of a world Beyond The Planet Of The Ultra-Vixens. First of all, she, along with Jonathan Karl, seems to be overly concerned with the condition of the president's "juice," which she seems to feel is less fortified with essential vitamins and iron than the juice of a president should be. And, somewhere in the Beyond, Freud gives up the business entirely and opens a cigar store.

ABC News's Jonathan Karl asked Obama if he was already out of "juice" to pass his agenda, citing the president's inability to get a watered-down gun bill passed in the Senate, Congress swatting away Obama on the sequester cuts, and the recent passage of a cybersecurity bill in the House with 92 Democrats on board, despite a veto threat from the White House. "Well, if you put it that way, Jonathan, maybe I should just pack up and go home," President Obama said with a flash of irritation, before tossing off a Mark Twain line: "Rumors of my demise may be a little exaggerated at this point." Then he put on his best professorial mien to give his high-minded philosophy of governance: Reason together and do what's right.

Look, I make the same criticism of the president from time to time, but mine is based on what I believe is the obvious empirical fact that the Republican party has gone insane and that the president has been painfully slow in coming to realize that he is dealing with lunatics. I don't find this "professorial" or "high-minded." I just find it wrong. But, then again, I don't measure politics by the inseam, either.

...

Nope. That's as far as we go here. You lost me with the adverb there, sad cat lady.

He said that if lawmakers are worried about primaries and afraid that working with him will be seen as "a betrayal," he can try to "create a permission structure for them to be able to do what's going to be best for the country." A permission structure? He might do better to remember what Jeremy Irons's pope says on "The Borgias," "Do you not see that even the impression of weakness begets weakness?"

Once again, we have questions to ask, chief among them being whether or not Dowd has gone, in the words of the late, great George V. Higgins, "as soft as church music." And if the president had "done better" and remembered the words of a fictionalized Pope Alexander VI, exactly how would that have wrangled the morons? Should he marry off one of his young daughters to appease the Lombards? Before we get a chance to answer these questions, Dowd stumbles into an actual issue and sprains an ankle.

...
[link:http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Maureen_Dowd_Dreams_Of_Lincoln_And_The_Borgias?src=rss&utm_source=feedly|Read more at link
]

[JHB]

1. I suppose we should be thankful '24' has been off the air for a few years...

...lest we hear more opining about WWJBD (What Would Jack Bauer Do)?

[Cha]

2. Thank you for Charlie Pierce, Mass

Jesus H. Christ In A Talkie, Congress did a helluva lot more than that. They voted not to approve the funds to close the place. They voted to forbid the transfer of Gitmo prisoners to United States facilities. They also acted like morons. Here's Lamar Smith of Texas, explaining how sending someone to "Gitmo North" is just the same as moving them into the vacant McMansion next door to yours.

People like to sit behind their computers and make up shit.