Obama the Republican

The Gargling Lark, a little pub in North South East Washington, D.C., honors former President Bill Clinton as our nation's first "black President," the joke being that Arkansan Clinton is of course Caucasian on casual inspection, but exceptionally good at feeling you feel your pain. So, did Bill steal Barack Obama's thunder, the Windy Citian who seems at first blush to be the nation's actual "first black president?"

Not at all. The White House now harbors in the Lincoln bedroom the nation's first African Republican ossifolder since well beyond Reconstruction. The joke part of that sort of slinks away uncomfortably as a few more Democrats wake up each starkly sullen morning to the realization that President Obama is a Republican.

I think it's an accident of perception. From FDR to Bush, Sr., the middle of the road was occupied by Eisenhower Republicans and a few southern-fried Democrats. Now, like the parting of the Red Sea, the middle of the road is high, dry and underpopulated. If Obama walks into the gap, he's going to look like Moses to future generations (a political generation has a butterfly's lifespan, so check back tomorrow.)

The thing that drives me nuts about Obama, he can't believe he's President, or that the health insurance reform bill passed both House and Senate and he signed it. He calls it, even now, a "bill." It's not a "bill," it was a bill, now it's The Law! Wake up, idiot.

Obama's sense of unreality is pervasive. He seems to share that sense of black disenfranchisment that sends kids jaywalking slowly across the middle of the block to such a degree that he can't come to grips with what he can do. He's wandering on Big Rock Candy Mountain, and has no idea he's in the wilderness.

The only Democrat I'd vote for right now is Kathleen Sebelius. She, at least, seems to know what she's supposed to be doing, and she's doing it.

I WON'T VOTE FOR ROXANNE CONLIN — I'll sit that one out — even if she wins the June 8th Iowa Democratic primary and becomes the party's candidate against Iowa's senior U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. It's unlikely she'll win, even in the primary, because she's made no overtures to release her income tax returns. That's what killed her candidacy against Terry Branstad when she ran for Governor in 1982. That, and her campaign after the primary was organized like a Chinese fire drill, as Julia Childs might have said about too many cooks. Blech. I don't know what's come over Grassley lately, but fear of vulnerability is probably not it. Despite the personna, he's no hick, and his Senate seat is secure.