I GUESS WE'RE ALL STUPID

As I was surfing some news sites the other day I was struck by the use of the word Fail used regarding something that President Obama had done. Okay, I guess it's alright for a blogger on the Republican side to express such a thought, but then those old alarm bells started to go off in my head.

I'd been hearing that same thought, in fact the same use of words, for some time now and then I remembered that Republican lawmaker who said that the GOP should work to ensure Obama's failure on health care reform. That the issue would become Obama's Waterloo. And then I did a little Google search.

Search for Obama+fail and Google will return 20,600,000 hits. With no point of comparison I had no way of knowing if that was a lot of hits for the terms, or an average number, or what. So I did another search, this time for Bush+fail. That returned 16,100,000! I was a bit shocked. what was going on here.

I mean, let's get serious. Obama has been in office 18 months and 9 days, as of today. George W. Bush was in office for 8 years. To what do we owe the difference. Now I'm sure that my right leaning readers will be happy to point out that there are more Obama+fail entries because President Obama is such a failure at his job. They'll probably go on and on about how he's screwed up this and muddled that and we should all just watch because it's going to get worse in the next two years. I guess that's one way of looking at it.

Of course, those of us with functioning memories will, maybe, remember WMD and "Mission Accomplished." We might think about all of the other ways that President Bush let us down and wonder how he, Bush, could have a better Google showing than Obama. We might think that the fix is in.

Let me tell you a story. Out local morning newspaper is a bit conservative in their op/ed department. Okay, more than a bit. They publish a column by a right wing writer who's initials are (I'm not kidding) B.S. In the last 18 months he's written two pieces that stick in my head, both for the same reason. I'll explain in a moment. Anyway, the first of the memorable columns appeared 3 days after the first reports about the Swine Flu. The writer's main, and only, point of the column was that Obama was a complete failure in his handling of the Swine Flu pandemic crisis. After only 3 days? And you have to assume that he submitted it at least a day earlier. So President Obama completely failed in his actions regarding this potential health crisis in just two days.

The other column I remember was just a month or so ago, wherein the question was asked, "Is Obama The Worst President Ever?" In order to answer that question the columnist, of course had to compare President Obama to some horrid past Presidents. Want to guess who he didn't pick? We saw some obscure comparison to Andrew Johnson and an equally lame comparison to James Buchanan. But even after a rereading I could not find the name of George W. Bush!

So, let's review. We know that there are columnists on the right who don't hesitate to call President Obama a failure, even when they can't possibly have any data to back up their assertion. Listen and read for yourselves. We also know that in a mere 18 months Obama has been linked to the word fail more than 4 million times more than the guy who came before him. I'm going to offer a theory here.

I think that the Republicans and the conservatives in our great country have all but agreed that, just as they never let any hint of disappointment or concern for the actions and policies of George W. Bush enter into their collective writings, they will never admit any successes by the current President. They want the President of the United States to fail, miserably, at his job and they will call him, and everything he does or offers, a failure. And they will do so without need of any facts what-so-ever.

Guys, this scares the crap out of me. I thought the right wing was all about motherhood, apple pie, Chevrolet and American Exceptionalism. How, I wonder, do they reconcile that with their complete and total disrespect for our President?

NOTE: I have not, nor will I, name the columnist: B.S. I don't want to drive any traffic his way. Ask me nice by email and I'll spill the beans.