28 September 2015

THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON BASEBALL, AND STEPHEN DECATUR

            I am so tired of being embarrassed by my President.  I really am.  I try to give him the respect that any person who occupies that office deserves.  We only get one President at a time, and this is his time—and for some reason, he invariably uses it to embarrass us.  The latest case in point is his appearance at the United Nations this morning.   

He had an opportunity to be a statesman.  He had an opportunity to show himself to be worthy of his Nobel Peace prize.  He had an opportunity to be a visionary.  All three legitimate uniforms were in his wall-locker back in the clubhouse, and what did he do?  He pushed them aside and showed up in the clown costume of a two bit Chicago ward heeler, a party hack.

To use the baseball analogy that Edward-Isaac Dovere used in his Politico article referenced above, he threw a couple of inside puff balls to Putin and then, in the grand Washington tradition of Jonathan Papelbon, he threw blazers at the head of his own Country and kicked us in the groin in the dugout!  According to Dovere, the President then “invoked the invasion of Iraq as an example of how the United States itself stumbled by going against international law.”  That’s a great way to establish moral authority—calling your own country an international outlaw. 

He had an international stage, and he wasted it for the sake of the political hacks who make up his base.  Dick Cheney left office seven years ago.  He was only Vice President.  But, having done nothing of real substance in seven years, the President reverts to the only real consistent policy of his presidency:  blame the guys who came before him.  And then as an afterthought, he takes a few puny swipes at the Blowhard of the Month—who is self-destructing on his own, thank you very much. 

That, of course, is the real fear of the Democrats:  Trump slithers back into the subways and sewers of New York City and people take an even harder look at Hillary Clinton and her ever-changing stories:  I gave all the e-mails, er, well, not all of them, but certainly all that I wanted to ever see the light of day, and besides it was Ms Abedin's fault, the one I set up to be paid by the State department and a Party loyalist and maybe the Bill and Chelsea Foundation (about which I know nothing, Colonel Hogan, absooooluuuutely nothing!) and its all a plot against me.

And then, to complete the baseball analogy, he decides on his own to come back out of the dugout to tip his hat at…..himself.  He should have learned from Jayson Werth of the Washington Bugs…Mosquitos…. Gnats, that’s it, the Washington Gnats.  Here is Werth only 7 weeks ago:  :  “We are only a game back right now, but as we get healthy, we’ll be rolling again. It’s our division to lose.”  As of tonight, the Insects are nine-and-a-half back and failing fast. 

According to Dovere, 

Obama held himself up as an example of how to make international diplomacy work. The U.N. is a body famous for spending a lot of time and money sitting around in rooms like this one, he said, bemoaning what’s gone wrong in the world and urging international action, but rarely delivering much more than resolutions.
That’s a huge contrast to the Iran agreement he spearheaded, Obama said. If the deal is “fully implemented," he said, "the prohibition on nuclear weapons is strengthened, a potential war is averted, our world is safer. That is the strength of the international system when it works the way it should.”  
Unless it doesn’t.  To quote the World War II RAF pilots who were fed up with qualified assurances,  “And if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bloody motor-bus.”

Nope, it was a bad day for the home team in that snake pit on the East River.  Our own manager shot us in our collective foot.  And he did it intentionally.

We need another Stephen Decatur.  “My Country.  In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right.  But right or wrong, my Country.”  Do we have some dirty laundry in our closet?  Some, but nowhere near as much as the “Hate America First” bunch would have you believe.  Should we air it in public?  Just remember what our mothers taught us.

No, you blew it, Mr. President.  And when the team is doing as badly as you suggest we are, baseball has a tried and (sometimes) true solution:  Fire the manager. 


Sorry kid, we’re gonna option you to the Mexican League.

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