E. J. Dionne Washington Post Writers Group

June 7, 2010

E. J. Dionne
Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th Street NW
Washington. D.C. 20017

RE: “Some people never let you down” – Some musings on your column in today’s Miami Herald.

Mr. Dionne,

There is a formulaic consistency common to best selling novelists and modern American Liberal pundits.

A flow, mellifluous and euphonic, and the total willingness to shun as if they were anathema any facts that contradict the main thesis or argument are musts.

Thus, your column in today’s Miami Herald is the journalistic equivalent of a good old porch hound warming your feet.

That the President, Lord Barack the Beneficent, is good, kind, gentle, sensitive plus a good basketball player is a given.[If I were to tell you that he throws a baseball like my daughter and her daughters would that make me mildly seditious?] His satraps engage in self flagellation because “We don’t communicate it well”. It becomes the reason for the coming seasons of discontent. “If only the American people knew, really knew the real President we would be gamboling in Elysian Fields” is a familiar cry when it is becoming obvious that the President needs a new tailor. In fact, he is about 2 gaffes away from needing any tailor, even a blind one. The lipstick on a pig remark is a bit stale so I won’t use it.

The jobs report of Friday last was preceded by 3 days of “Wait ‘til you see the jobs report” and “Go Stimulus!”.

I could say the jobs report was a bit like a fart in Church but usually they are involuntary. If these guys are so smart they should have known. A good CEO always picks subordinates that he believes are smarter, harder working, or luckier than he thinks he is. Last week the heads up their asses leaks about good times are upon us is proof that Jesse Jackson was right when he said that “the only thing Obama ever run was his mouth”. Wasn’t that just before he said he wanted to cut his ball off? Whodathunk that the Reverend Jackson was a charter member of the Tea Party or maybe the Militia?

[As an aside, I worked briefly for the Census Bureau. I can say two things with 100% metaphysical certitude. #1 – I fulfilled my life long ambition to become a “seasonally adjusted statistic”. #2 – It should be obvious but if there is a better trained, more highly motivated, ready to hit the ground running Federal employee base – with the possible exception of the Post Office – ready to take over the quotidian operations of the hydrocarbon incident in the Gulf of Mexico I would like to see it.]

You mention White House hack flack Christine Romer. Her weekly attempts to make cow chips into rib-eye are hugely entertaining. Her CV shows her to be an accomplished academician – Is that an oxymoron? – who, after getting a Krispy Kreme enema, is rolled out in front of the White House to do George Orwell proud. I hope her sunny disposition and perpetual 25 tooth grin are chemically induced. If she is auditioning for the job of event planner on the Titanic she has my vote. She tells the world at least once a week that the light at the end of the tunnel is Diogenes when it just might be the 20th Century Express.

Too bad. She seems like a nice lady.

You then bemoan and bewail that the well intentioned Congress lacks the huevos to borrow $23,000,000,000 from the Chinese to meet the payroll for 300,000 teachers.

#1 – Capitalizing day to day expenses is a no-no. My largest payroll had 256 workers on it. Many times we did the banking equivalent of the 4 corner offense to meet it. The thought of borrowing long term to meet Friday’s eagle would have led to a shareholders’ revolt, a visit from the SEC, and a pissed off United States Attorney.

#2 – Would you share with me the Logic that condemns Bush deficits but praises Obama’s? If Bush borrowing billions is poor husbandry why is Barack borrowing 4 times as much the wonder of the age?

The faint sound you hear is that of the Gods of the Copy Headings sitting quietly and scribbling on the mountainside. It’s called keeping score. It’s what people in the real world do.

Finally you end by invoking the demon spirit of Jimmy Carter.

By any standard imaginable, by universal acclaim, by common consent, by volcanic acclamation – Mt. Saint Helen’s happened on his watch – Jimmy Carter was the worst President of the 20th Century. He alone makes Hoover [Herbert, not J. Edgar] admirable. He was nasty and mean but in no way tough. By his 3rd year the world was falling apart. At home, he gave new meaning to the term “misery index”. His brother sold truly bilious beer when he wasn’t working for Qadafi. There would be no debate about abortion if it could be made retroactive.

He will be remembered for many things.

He couldn’t direct a two car funeral.

If he had been reelected this country would have been in a shooting war at a time and at a place not of our own choosing.

He made effort the ultimate arbiter. Results didn’t matter.

Thus, he became the paradigmatic template for clueless modern American Liberals.

The only thing that will redound to his credit is that he was so bad, so inept, so God-awful a man as has ever sat in the White House, that he made it easy for the great Reagan to come in a save our nation from its self inflicted toxic ‘malaise’. As a bonus, he beat the Russkies and saved the world.

Thanks for reminding me.




Kevin Smith



PS – When I see Joe Sestak and the way he abuses the Naval Academy Honor Code and then I see Helen Thomas, and if she isn’t the best cougar in town I want to see the other contestants, I think that either Lee Atwater is haunting the White House or Dick Cheney has made the basement his best “undisclosed location”. If they are doing this all to themselves I wouldn’t worry about Iran getting nuclear weapons. With a little luck those WOGS will blow themselves up. I would worry about the Rootie Kazooties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue eyeballing the “reset” button.
Has the statute of limitations on blaming Bush run out yet?
One last request. I search for an answer. You‘re in Washington. Maybe you can find it. If Clinton gave us surpluses in the late ‘90s why didn’t the debt go down? Maybe the answer is in one of those famous lock boxes. Help me, Obi Wan Kanobe.