E.J. Dionne, The Washington Post

February 16, 2009

E.J. Dionne
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20071

RE: “The Eye of the Storm” – Your column about travels with the Great One that could be subtitled “Nothing Succeeds Like Excess”.

Mr. Dionne,

Two things about your tumescent paean to President Bambi were instantly obvious this morning.

#1 – Neither you nor he is aware of History. It, being filled with hard things called facts, is inconvenient when it conflicts with the agreed upon version of the way things should have been. Thus it gets tossed easily under the bus of true facts when it serves a greater purpose. At the rate this guy is going he’ll need to have a lot of buses in reserve. It’s getting very crowded under it.

You speak of “his devotion to FDR-style pragmatism”. I suppose it would be “pragmatic” for a candidate to run for President promising to balance the budget as FDR did. I suppose it would be “pragmatic” for him, having been elected, then to forget about his promise. Hey, that’s politics, right? “Nothing lost save honor”, right?

If “we will do what works” was the one fixed star of the period of the first two terms of FDR why didn’t he just shut the New Deal down? If the proof of the pudding is in the eating how could this experiment been allowed to go past 1935? By each and every measurable standard of an economy the country was in worse shape 8 years into the New Deal than it was at the beginning. Would not “pragmatism” have dictated a stop to all those failed policies at some point?

If the NRA didn’t work in the ‘30s and the Job Corps didn’t work in the ‘60s why should as yet some unnamed spawn of those disastrous policies be expected to work this time around?

Maybe it’s time to thank the Germans and the Japanese for their help in ending the Depression in this country.





#2 – Although you didn’t say it I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you were on Air Force 1 with the Chosen One. Answer as many as you can.

Do you know if he has to use toilet paper?
What about deodorant? Cologne? Breath mints?
Did you touch the hem of his garment? Did your bad knee feel better?
Were there any lame people at the airport so his shadow could fall upon them?

Is that a flashlight in your pocket or are you just glad to write about him?

President Bambi is spot on about one thing. He’s no “sap”. Why should he be when he has ass kissing toads like you on his intellectual payroll?

The spirit of Walter Duranty is about to be loosed on America yet again.