No, now is not the time:
Now, back in 2008, Barack Obama was elected president with a Democrat-controlled House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Many of us correctly knew this was like having a toddler armed with power tools. Others, though, didn’t see the danger and cooed, “Oh, look at that little guy. He’s so industrious! He’s going to get a lot done,” while the rest of us were freaking out, worried about him getting near anything valuable. And before we could yell, “No, little Barry, no!” he went right after health care with his drill, and it’s basically all ruined now.
So in 2010 we voted to take away his power tools by turning the House over to the Republicans. Obama was still a destructive little tyke who just refused to listen, but at least now it was a bit harder for him to burn the whole house down or something. In 2012, we — well, I don’t know how to stretch the analogy — had the option to exchange little Barry at the kid-trade-in emporium and get a better kid who might not be as dumb and destructive. I guess we had grown fond of the little dummy, though, and thought maybe he was finally learning. We were just being sentimental, of course. We really should have done the smart thing and sold the kid to gypsies.
And that brings us to 2014 and the option we have before us now: mittens. Now, no one is talking about giving the tyke power tools again. There’s just no conceivable scenario in which the Democrats take back the House this year — and I’m including science fiction scenarios involving advanced aliens and Doctor Who-type closed time loops — so the only real question is whether the Republicans can get a majority in the Senate. That would be like forcing little Barry to wear mittens to keep his grubby little fingers out of things. He’ll still be able to knock things over and run into furniture, but the mittens will at least somewhat limit the damage he can cause.
Now, I want to note that I don’t mean this analogy to be disrespectful to President Obama. But I think most historians will back me when I say his presidency is the equivalent of a dumb child running into tables.
Read the rest. You know you want to.
It’s perfectly natural, though oft disagreeable, for a child to do childish things. Society recognizes that a 3 year old can’t be held to adult standards; a 3 year old might decide to go running screaming down a busy street, and so might an adult. But society would treat them differently, and rightly so. We wouldn’t call the child a pervert or mentally ill for doing this, though we would the adult; the child would not be arrested and incarcerated. Thus, likening Obama to a child does a grave disservice to children, even the particularly dumb and destructive ones, because the child at least has an excuse for their behavior.
But, the guy who ushered in a strong economic recovery after the dot-com bust, and left a stable Iraq to his successor, was the dumb one. Because this guy is glib and the other stumbled over his words.
It’s how we judge intelligence in the media age. It’s not what you do, it’s how stylishly you do it. Run the economy into the cellar? Demolish the entire post-WWII Pax Americana? That’s OK, as long you can issue smooth excuses blaming it on anyone but yourself.
And have a crisp crease in your pants….
don’t forget the crisp crease.