Imagine if George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the "time for talking is over." Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails in the pursuit of "fishy" dissent.
Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott derided critics as "evil-mongers" the way Harry Reid recently described town-hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay had called critics "un-American" the way Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer did last week, or if White House strategist Karl Rove had been Sir Spam-a-lot instead of David Axelrod.
Now, I'm not asking you, dear reader, to do this so that you might be able to see through the glare of Obama's halo or the outlines of the media's staggering double standard when it comes to covering this White House. Rather, it is to grasp that the Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.
Lashing out at the town-hall protesters, playing the race card, whining about angry white men and whispering ominously about right-wing militias is almost always a sign of liberalism's weakness -- a failure of imagination.
Funny how these supposed champions of the Enlightenment can't grasp that people can disagree with them for honest reasons. Instead, we simply must be Rush's automatons, which is to say racist, fascist thugs.
In addition to the slander, such complaints are monumentally, incandescently lame coming from a party that controls Washington. Liberals themselves say these evil-mongers are a tiny minority, a bunch of "AstroTurf" frauds -- so why not ignore them and get on with the work you were elected to do?
Obama's determination to steamroll to victory only reinforces suspicion of bad motives. Indeed, Dem dudgeon that the town-hall protesters don't want civil debate is hysterical, given that Obama wanted this over before the August recess.
No wonder the president who thought the time for talk was over long ago now doesn't like the talk he's getting.
Some might say the real story is to be found in the eroding support from independents and Blue Dog Democratic congressmen. Or in the panic among seniors that Obama will raid Medicare. Or in his inability to get progressive Dems to agree to a bipartisan approach. Or maybe the real story is Obama's manifest inability to sell a program he's invested his presidency in.
But no. Obama wants the debate to be about angry white men. And, as lame as that is, that's what's happening. It won't make ObamaCare a reality, but it will shift the blame from where it rightly belongs.
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