Remember Ricky Ray Rector? He was the poor SOB with an IQ of about 70, who was put to death by the State of Arkansas in 1992. Governor Bill Clinton flew home off the campaign trail to supervise the state's murder, so that he could show the voting public that he was just as capable of ruthless ugliness in the name of serving his own interests as any Republican ever was. Americans like that in a president. We like our president to be just like us - not some elite snob with that whole ethics thing going on, or all that other effete East Coast superiority sh*t (see, for example: "Bush, George W."). Anyway, poor Ricky Ray was so out of it that, just before they fried him, he asked the prison guards if they would save the pecan pie from his last meal so that he could have it "later." Didn't matter to Wild Bill. He made a public spectacle of flipping the switch on a guy who didn't have a clue of what was about to hit him. (And why not, either? So some dummy on death row had to die for him to get to the White House - so what? What's wrong with that? Heck, in Clinton's second race, he cut millions of people off welfare in order to win. Ricky Ray was small potatoes when it comes to presidential roadkill.)
Anyhow, keep Ricky Ray Rector in mind as you read the following passage from a New York Times article about to be published, based on an interview with one Barack Obama of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.: "In an hour-long interview with the Times's White House correspondent, Peter Baker, Mr. Obama predicted that his political rivals would either be chastened by falling short of their electoral goals or burdened with the new responsibility that comes from achieving them. 'It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible, either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn't work for them,' Mr. Obama said. 'Or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.'
Say what?!?!
Oh my god.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
Now I have a new theory explaining the failure of the Obama presidency: This is the Ricky Ray Rector of presidents.
This guy managed to get through the last two decades without noticing just what the vicious thugs of the Republican Party are entirely capable of.
This guy lived through the last two years of his own sinking presidency without noticing what these sick freaks have already been doing to him personally at every juncture.
This guy is completely unaware that multiple Republicans poised to take control of the House - some of whom will have gavels in one hand and blank subpoenas in the other - have already come out and made clear that they will run this White House ragged by investigating it over every scandal they can possibly invent.
This guy does not realize that some of them are literally already talking about impeachment.
This guy is the Ricky Ray Rector of presidents. He is about to be subjected to a cosmic-scale buggering of epic proportions, and he's still talking about "working with" Attilla's Army of the GOP, and hoping that the Hitler Youth across the aisle might "feel more responsible" after they have achieved their goal of wrecking him and his party, precisely by means of wanton irresponsibility.
Oh my god.
I know that presidents can famously be trapped inside a bubble of insularity, but this is something altogether frightening. This cat is utterly in denial. This is no longer just a matter of being a slow learner. This is no longer a matter of some kumbaya obsession to offer lovely bipartisanship cookies to a pack of ferocious, starving jungle tigers. If Barack Obama thinks that getting shellacked in November is going to make his life better - never mind ours - this president can no longer be said to be rational. I mean this quite seriously. The above passage suggests to me that our president is fully delusional.
Even Obama's top political advisor seems to be waking up to a glimmer of reality, although he is ridiculously late in doing so. Cynthia Tucker writes that, "In an interview last week in his West Wing office, David Axelrod, one of Obama's closest advisers, acknowledged that the administration had been surprised by the unified Republican resistance to the president's agenda. 'We had the idea that, particularly in a time of national crisis, there would be more of an inclination to work together. Well, I think we miscalculated,' Axelrod said."
Yeah? You think, Dave? Hey, maybe you did miscalculate there just a bit, now that you mention it.
It gets worse: "I think the Republicans have been diabolically clever about how they've portrayed this. They stood on the sidelines and made a decision that 'we're going to let him wrestle with this mess that we created. And then in two years we can try and hang him with it."
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