Valentine's Day has come and gone, and my guess is that the Republican leadership in Congress did not send President Zero a heart-shaped box of chocolates. (I'm thinking that Zero might be the sobriquet to use for a while; "Prez O," "O Man," etc., are not bad, but Zero seems to nail our current President's incredible lightness of being, his amazing freedom from any sense of principle or passionate conviction. Truly, he is our first post-ideological President, one to whom even the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are relevant only if there is a "bipartisan consensus" on the issue in question.)
The Republicans are doing the nation a major disservice by withholding their love, for it is their love which Zero most craves. Republicans are the Daddy Party; George Lakoff, the Berkeley "framing" guru, has so pronounced. Democrats are Mommy, the party which loves you even when you screw up. Republicans, by contrast, do not offer unconditional love: you have to earn it, preferably by having the good judgment to be born into economically advantaged circumstances.
If Republicans would simply tell Obama that they love him, would applaud his speeches at joint sessions, stop rebuffing his endless overtures, and desist from voting against absolutely everything he proposes with 100% bloc solidarity, we might begin to get somewhere. But they won't. Dads can be so rigid sometimes. Mommy never behaves like that; she's too soft inside, too compassionate, which is why the Democrats do not interest Obama. He has them wrapped around his little finger.
What does Zero have to do, for crying out loud? Yesterday he extolled the virtues of building nuclear power plants. I saw him behind a lectern framed by a couple of guys in hard hats at the new site in Maryland where the first nuclear plant in the USA in 30 years will be built. Obama introduced his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, and said something to the effect that Chu could have saved all that PhD tuition by simply taking tutorials from the electrical engineers at the plant. You know, because they're so smart, unlike Chu, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in physics. Someone should probably tell Zero that Chu is not in the electricians' union, actually, and that he might be capable of instructing the techs at the Maryland facility in the finer points of nuclear fission. I note, with dismay, that Obama is gradually moving toward a pronunciation of nuclear along the lines of "nukular." It must be something in the cuisine at the White House, I think, unless this is yet another subtle cry for love from the Republicans, as was Obama's list of "clean energy" alternatives in his speech yesterday, which included offshore drilling for oil and gas, and coal-fired power plants.
Anyway, one nuke plant is not going to do it, so if we're going all in, let's go France about it and build a hundred. France, by the way, doesn't know what to do with all the spent reactor fuel either, or the tons of plutonium that get produced. I guess we can either stash it in Yucca Mountain (what else does Nevada want to do with all that desert?) or sell the Pu to Iran, which will save them a lot of trouble.
Zero has moved ahead with his deficit reduction commission, in the face of opposition from both Mom & Dad. Obstinately (and with great determination), he has named Alan Simpson, the most tiresome of cornball retreads from Republican glory days, as the head of the commission, which will have no actual power, authority or relevance. To ensure bipartisanship, Erskine Bowles, or Erskine Caldwell, or whoever will serve as co-chair. Simpson's appointment should toll an ominous bell for the vast legions of trailer-dwelling retirees in Bullhead City and Riverside, CA. He served on a Senate subcommittee concerned with Social Security "reform" during his chuckleheaded reign as a solon from Wyoming. It's no secret that Zero does not like Social Security, and the Prez has a lot of company in Dad's party. What a tremendous waste of tax money it is. All that off-the-top FICA swag spiraling down the drain of Big Government, when it could be used on Wall Street or by the Defense Department. And Medicare! Don't get them started. They hate the "Entitlements," and Zero is seeking bipartisan cover for getting rid of them.
In truth, Zero likes all of W's good ideas. Waterboarding, detention-forever-without-trial, no-habeas Bagram, the surge in Afghanistan, warrantless wiretapping, "reform" of Social Security by sending all the dough to the Banker Boyz, forbidding Medicare from volume discounts, hiding torture photos, you name it. Then why oh why won't the Republicans love him? It can't be his ethnicity. Michael Steele is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Is it Obama's name? Are they that shallow? What else could O do to prove that he shares every last one of their values, and none of the so-called Democratic "values?" (I know, I know - I can't think of one, either.)
It's bound to happen, so I hope Obama does it soon: appear at a Tea Party rally. Just go for it, man. Pull out all the stops. A guy with your persistence will always win Dad's heart. I mean, really: how can he resist?
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