President Contemplates Navel

Another Conservative ragging (tho perhaps under the guise of fun) on the president:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11062

True Manhood
By Jay D. Homnick
Published 2/23/2007 12:06:30 AM

The chief of police projects power by his rank and quiet air of authority; if he has to remind you he has it, he lost it. If there is one thing no sitting President should ever do, it is to overtly refer to his legacy. That is a subject for his lackeys -- and his detractors.

Which brings us to the nettlesome matter of our mettlesome President conversing overmuch with meddlesome reporters about the nature of his job. A long, hyperventilating feature in Newsweek quotes him as "seeing himself like Truman."

Usually Presidents only enroll in the navel academy when they are at sea. When the good old buoy network fails, they begin to play distress calls on their umbilical chords. And our fearless leader certainly looks to be in deep water. Not only deep water but hot water. Not only deep water and hot water but muddy water. At least I'm assuming from my respectful distance that this stuff is muddy water. No wonder he is flailing about without a compass. But still...

True, the Seven Year Retch is upon him in full force. He is stuck in a war that is intractable, incorrigible and intransigent -- and that's just the one with Congress; Iraq is worse.

The correct way to respond to this bloodbath -- if I may imitate Moses and transform the water metaphor -- has been modeled by many preceding receders. First you go to Asia and Africa for a month. In Africa you apologize for apartheid, AIDS and Madonna's rapacious adoption practices. In China you sign a historic agreement to reveal what the man-made materials are in our sneakers. In Tibet you pet the llamas.

Then you come home and announce you are reapplying yourself with renewed vigor to the "issues facing the American People" such as overemployment, second-home empty-nest syndrome and the shortage of yacht parking spaces. You let Congress dump in your lap a bloated omnibus spending bill including such inspired items as the Lewis Carroll Memorial Slithy Tove Definition Research Grant. This, in return for their backing some teeny-weeny legislative initiative, say free laundry for school uniforms.

But to sit around trying to channel Truman is pathetic. Even without the Freudian interpretation of searching for the "true man" within, the spectacle of Presidents sociologizing instead of socializing is repulsive. Keep your head above the fray and concentrate on acting presidential. After all, you are under oath.