You 'n Me 'n Obama

originally published April 23, 2008

So, according to what Barack Obama told the high-rolling political contributors in San Francisco, people in Pennsylvania are bitter at their lot and turn to religion, guns and hatred of immigrants. Furor ensues, and that’s all the interlocutors and Hillary Clinton can talk about at the next debate. Obama looked silly bowling, too.

Darn! I thought we had a candidate there.

But, Hillary makes up stuff about hitting the tarmac in Bosnia amid hostile fire, forgetting that she was videotaped strutting unconcernedly off the plane.

I guess that’s it for the Democrats. Thank goodness John McCain only wants to cut taxes while financing the Iraq War another 100 years. At least he knows how to bowl, I guess, or he would have already been exposed as a wuss.

These recent Democratic gaffes remind us that the whole point of a presidential campaign is to assure us all that the president is just like us or worse, and that he or she is in touch with us, feels our, you know, pain, like the elder George Bush couldn’t do because he didn’t know how to pay for something at the supermarket. His son talks with a twang and wears cowboy boots, so he ain’t no better’n the teensy-weensiest of us, and that’s why we made him our president twice in a row or why we were glad those ordinary Americans on the Supreme Court did.

If Barack Obama thinks he deserves to be the president and can’t bowl and doesn’t know why rural Pennsylvanians turn to God, guns and gingoism (I know it doesn’t sound like a “g,” but it looks like one), then he’s got another thing coming.

Time was, we wanted our presidents to be extraordinary men. George Washington never told a lie, unless somebody’s lying to us. Thomas Jefferson ’n them were, you know, aristocrats and deists and drank wine and wrote the charters for state universities. Let’s be frank. Those old boys would make us uncomfortable if they showed up trying to get us to vote for them. They’d be more at home in Versailles than in your house, but they probably couldn’t ring a horseshoe.

John Kennedy a man of the people? That sucker wouldn’t let them stick a cowboy hat on his head even for political publicity purposes. Didn’t even wear hats. Was a Boston blue-blood. A Catholic. Couldn’t drive a pickup truck out of a mud puddle. Talked funny. Lyndon Johnson was the man. Picked up his little beagle dog by the ears and showed off his operation scar; made senators meet with him while he sat on the toilet. Now that’s a good old boy. Would still be president if he hadn’t gone queer for civil rights.

The masses of common people who got all excited about Obama are just dead wrong. Obama is nobody to get excited about. He went to Harvard for chrissake! His wife is African-American. He lives in Chicago. What does he know about middle America? This is too much. A black man thinks he’s better than the rest of us, thinks he knows what’s wrong with us. That’s too insulting to think about. Hillary’s right. He’s not qualified to be president. Good thing we found it out right now. Suppose he had invited the head of Russia over to the White House for some bowling and then spent the evening throwing them down the gutter. What would that do for our standing in the world?

I don’t know what we’re going to do now. All those thousands and thousands of ordinary Americans who have sent their money in to Obama. What are they going to do, get a refund? They thought he was just like them. Now they see he doesn’t know how to bowl, and they’re disillusioned. They see that his pastor is a Negro, and they’re disappointed. They see that he doesn’t carry a gun, and they are afraid. They hear him talk about the problems that are making it impossible for them to break even, and they think he’s a know-it-all. Hillary is just like you and me. She’s a good old girl. But John McCain, he’s a good old man. No way he’s going to talk down to us. He’s a straight shooter. He tells it like it is. This war is good and will be won. Shoot, we can cut taxes and still win it. We can cut taxes and pour billions upon billions more into prolonging the war and still balance the budget. But we don’t need to get into that boring stuff. McCain will know what to do, because he didn’t go to Harvard: he’ll just use plain talk and common sense. And the court will back him up, too. Once you get past those candidates who think they’re better than you, it’s the best of all possible worlds, plus tax cuts.

Pete McCommons

editor@flagpole.com