After Ohio dropped into the President's column on election night, BadgerPundit couldn't wait to swing by moveon.org, blogforamerica.com, and Michael Moore's web site to witness the heartbreak, despondency, and (with any luck) a jumper or two. After 4 straight years of lies, villification, slander, and incessant hectoring diatribes all directed at America's 43rd president, election night vindication tasted sweet indeed.
As a professional politician, President Bush doubtless has a thicker skin than I do...perhaps he also has a more forgiving heart. But for my part, I confess to an open delight in the pain and anguish of the president's adversaries as they tasted bitter defeat. Every long-haired Hyde Park radical with a "Beat Bush" T-Shirt, all those now-ridiculous looking Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers in the parking lot, even the weird pudgy kid with the especially picayune Wesley Clark button on his backpack: The sight of these forlorn specimens made me feel strangely elated on the bright morning of November 3. Then I saw the marquee at the campus theater displaying a sign for "Farenheit 9/11", and I felt even better!
As inauguration day approaches, these charitable thoughts spring once again to mind, defying all polite impulses to suppress them (whether in the name of healing, bipartisanship, or even good sportsmanship). My inner political self wants to cry out to Blue State America, again and again, "In Your Face, Losers!" "Enjoy Political Irrelevance for the Next 4 Years" and "Take Your Socialism and Shove it Up Your...", well you get the picture. The temptation to do a sack dance in the end zone of political domination is just too great, so here goes.
The Wall Street Journal observes that President Bush is far from the first president to repay his critics with the best revenge- victory. Alas, even Billy Jeff "BJ" Clinton was able to rest soundly in his bed, enjoying the gentle lullaby of the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments occuring nightly in conservative circles. President Grant's 2nd Inaugural Address seems particularly apropos:
"I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history, which today I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict, which I gratefully accept as my vindication."
Or Thomas Jefferson in his 2nd Inaugural:
During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare.
So in honor of President Bush's triumph over his whining critics, I would like to propose a challenge to whomever might read this disgraceful piece of gloating. Search the on-line world into its remotest corners, seeking the most hysterical, unhinged, libellous, vicious, fanciful, and fulminating condemnation of the President which the perfervid collective mind of the left can devise. Save it for inauguration day...And then, when all your liberal friends are hiding from their televisions and radios, read crap like this and think to yourself:
How sweet it is.
