Wednesday
So, on Tuesday night, after our
grueling flight down from Spokane to LAX, I stayed up. I watched on
CSPAN Mrs. Michelle Obama give a speech at what I think must have
been the University of Florida. Then came The Main Event: The
President interviewed by David Letterman. It was a stunner.
First, when Mr. Obama came out, the crowd went wild. That’s not
surprising. The first question that Dave asked Mr. Obama was
something like this: “You look great. How much do you weigh these
days?”
Mr. Obama answered, as if the question were not insane, “About
one eighty.”
“Looks good on you,” said Dave. “You carry it well.”
The first question should have been, “Mister President, what on
earth are you doing here? The Middle East is on the brink of war.
Iran, the most dangerous nation on earth, is about to get a nuclear
bomb. Why did you blow off talks to save the world from an Islamic
bomb and the Mideast from war to appear on a comedy talk show?”
Of course, that was never asked.
Instead, we got a lot about Republican obstructionism in
Congress and the greed of the Republican rich. (Mr. Letterman makes
about $30 million a year.) After one particular sally, Dave
actually asked, “Is this just the attitude of the country club
rich?” or something like that. Well, duh. It takes one to know one,
Dave. How dare you talk about “the rich” as if you were a peasant
laborer in Sinkiang?
It was a spectacularly ass-kissing performance, but just about
what I expected from Dave. However, Mr. Obama is so smooth, just so
incredibly, unbelievably smooth, it just left me gasping.
At one point when Dave was fulminating against Republicans, Mr.
Obama, who is about one hundred times smoother than anyone else
running for President this year, said something like, “Look. I have
been traveling all around this country. I meet a lot of
Republicans. They’re good, hard-working people.”
This was genius. Why don’t we have any geniuses (besides Karl
Rove) on our side? It made Mr. Obama seem almost huggable for that
instant.
But, more to the point, Mr. Obama, like his charming and very
likeable wife, made a simple point that the Republicans just cannot
seem to answer. He said, and she said, and they’ve been saying for
months, something like this. “We want to help everyone get into the
middle class and to be as successful as they can be. And when we
make it to success, we want to help others to make it to success,
too. That’s not what the Republicans want.”
That is nonsense on many counts.
First of all, Americans make it into the middle class not by
entitlements, not by affirmative action except in a few cases, but
by something that the Obamas rarely mention: extremely hard work
and thrift.
We Republicans want everyone to succeed. We have had student
loans, too. We had the GI Bill, too. But we recognize that there is
no government program that can substitute for hard work. You cannot
pass a bill to make everyone middle class. That takes work and
thrift.
We are the party that believes in work. (We used to be the party
that believed in thrift but that was a while ago.)
Second, what have the Obamas done to encourage hard work?
Putting people on food stamps? Putting people on welfare? No.
That’s a short-term expedient. But work is what does it and Mr.
Obama has the street cred to tell his friends and brothers and
sisters that they must stop complaining and actually work.
Of course, he never does. It all reminds me of years and years
ago when I ghost wrote a book for a very famous civil rights leader
of black heritage. He would repeatedly tell audiences, “Look,
demand equal rights, and I’m with you. Demand equality of
opportunity and I am right there with you. But if you learn to
plumb a house or fix an electric circuit you can feed your family
for life.”
I wonder if Mr. Obama ever thinks of saying that. Nahh, why
should he? He has things going his way just fine.
Meanwhile, one more little note. Dave pointed out that at the
GOP convention, there was a debt clock and the dollars on it scared
him. “How big is our debt right now,” Dave asked him.
“I don’t really know,” said Mr. Obama. I AM NOT KIDDING!!!!!
What? The POTUS doesn’t know how big the national debt is? Can that
be? I guess that if he is so uninformed that he thinks that a small
tax rise on the rich and a few trims in federal projects here and
there will solve the deficit catastrophe, it is possible he
actually knows almost nothing except to be slick. And, wow, is he
slick.
I want to be back in Idaho.
