This can’t really be the plan. The fact that President Obama and his top strategists think their most effective argument in the final three weeks before Election Day is that they suspect, without evidence, that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to finance its most recent advertising campaign — that pretty much defines desperation, right?

To which a proper response might be…

“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”

To really understand all this stuff, you’ve got to go back to Saul Alinsky and Rules For Radicals, which still appears to be Obama’s bible.

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

And this is what the President and his people have been attempting to do since he took office. Or even before.

Rush Limbaugh was the first picked/frozen/personalized/polarized target. But with three hours a day and an audience of some 20-odd million politically-engaged listeners, it didn’t work too well.

Then it was Dick Cheney’s turn. And that went even worse, because regardless of how badly demonized Cheney was in the media and how unpopular with the Left (and the general public as well in the aftermath of the Bush administration), the last thing you want to do is get into a debate on national security with Dick Cheney. Obama lost that one, and he reaped the unintended consequences of elevating Cheney’s daughter Liz, who is just as articulate and passionate a critic of the president as her father is, into stardom.

Obama then returned to bashing President Bush, which was the central theme of his 2008 campaign, and he lost that one as well. Because Bush gave his successor the complete silent treatment, refusing to answer Obama’s attacks out of a sense of decorum. The voters have taken that as a show of class, which many believe Obama lacks. He’s suffered in comparison – particularly since Obama has generated no real progress from the end of the Bush presidency to now and a growing number of Americans actually say they’d prefer to have Bush back in office to the guy criticizing him.

While the Bush-bashing isn’t over, we next saw Karl Rove enter Obama’s crosshairs. But while lots of folks on the Left and the Right alike dislike Rove, the idea that an entire administration would engage in attacking a private citizen doesn’t really resonate with the public. And Rove, for all his faults, isn’t bad on TV. He can defend himself fairly well.

John Boehner is the most current individual target, and he’ll remain in the crosshairs for some time. But the problem with attacking Boehner is that nobody knows who he is. Now that he’s the subject of an unpopular president’s attacks, there’s a sizable risk that the public might decide it likes Boehner better than Obama once it gets to know him. Boehner is a little on the bland side, he smokes, he’s taken lots of money from lobbyists (just like every successful politician in Washington has) and he’s got a tan far, far too deep for a congressman from Ohio to have – but he’s also a good bit closer to mainstream America both personally and politically than the President is. So it’s risky to be targeting Boehner, even if it makes sense to attack the Speaker of the House when he or she is of the opposite political party (perhaps Bush should have gone after Nancy Pelosi a bit more in 2007 and 2008).

What is apparent from watching the administration attack individuals, though, is that Rule #11 doesn’t work when you have more power than the target does. Rather than advancing your cause by speaking truth to power, you just look like a bully.

So Rule #11 has been bent a little of late. The administration seems to have dumped the part about not attacking abstract corporations or bureaucracies in favor of a more general “they” – as “they” can’t fight back the way an individual can.

There have been a few examples of this – doctors who chop off feet or pull out tonsils for fun and profit, evil insurance companies, BP and so on. Now we’re on the Chamber of Commerce and foreigners.

The fact that the Obama administration has no room to talk about taking foreign contributions and that 43 percent of the Chamber’s donations this year have gone to Democrats doesn’t make them much of a “they,” either.

But if you’re an Alinskyite one-trick pony, you don’t have much else to go on. Alinsky teaches how to disturb the peace and destroy institutions; he offers very little on how to build or govern. Those things take useful knowledge, and probably some talent – commodities in acute deficit with the crew in charge of the country.

The American people are realizing this. They will punish accordingly starting on Nov. 2.

By their definition, success is winning back the House, winning back the Senate and winning every major governor’s race. When you’ve got winds this strong in your favor, that’s the kind of election you need to have – or it should be considered a colossal failure.”

I have to say that I agree with the current Democratic Party strategist.  Much is made over the prospects of the Republicans in November.  The strongly posited public sentiment against the Democratic Party is one of the strongest revolts against incumbent leadership in American history.  Democrats have no platform on which to run a campaign, and connection with the Obama administration’s grossly unpopular policy is political suicide.  Because of this lack of strategy, many Democrats are actually running on platforms designed to pin them as supportive of Republican policy.  Take Earl Pomery, for example, who I described in a recent post as touting his support of George W. Bush.

In addition to all of this anti-Democrat sentiment there is more reason to be optimistic.  Recent polls show that Independent voters favor Republican candidates upwards of 13 points over Democrats.  That is all the more important considering that Independents constitute 37% of the entire electorate.  Check out this article on the importance of independents.

With all that said, many strategists in both the Republican and Democratic parties predict that the Republicans will not take control of the Senate.  To that I say, if not now, then when?  Never has there been a time more favorable to a Republican Congressional candidate than 2010.  To be honest, Republican candidates might very well be elected on the simple basis that they are not Democrats.

Gaining control of the House  will merely be a product of public dissatisfaction with Democratic leadership.  So, to say that it would be a success simply to control the House of Representatives is settling for a bad deal.  Real success, success grounded in achieving victories based on policy and character, can only be characterized by Republican takeover of the Senate as well.

Anything less is merely expected.

However, recent polls indicate a gain from the Democratic party on GOP dominated popularity. Here are some findings from a Washington Post/ABC survey:

Democrats have cut in half the GOP‘s early-September advantage on the question of which party’s candidates voters say they will support on Nov. 2. They have also made small gains on the question of which party people trust to handle big issues, such as the economy and health care.

President Obama‘s approval rating has rebounded to where it was in July after hitting an all-time low a month ago. Also, in some state races, Democratic candidates have taken the lead over their Republican opponents or narrowed GOP advantages.

To be sure, the findings still display a significant gap between the GOP and the Democrats. Though slight, the gain is significant in that there is any gain at all, considering the ferocity of the citizenry in opposition to the left. That being said, it is almost certain that as November 2nd approaches, the race for government control will tighten in many areas of the country. For this reason, these polls are not terribly shocking by any means.  In fact, they might even be overdue results.

But, why would a Democratic strategist make such an optimistic statement about the GOP?

Playing the Expectations game

Shanto Iyengar, political communications scholar, details the intricacies of what is called “playing the expectations game.”  Here are the rules:

Campaign spokespersons typically downplay poll results that show their candidate comfortably ahead…in the hope that the outcome will be more surprising and hence covered more extensively and favorably.  Conversely, campaigns sometimes attempt to persuade reporters that the opponent has a substantial lead.”

I can give a specific example of playing expectations from the 2006 campaign.  After the vice-presidential selection of John Edwards by Kerry, Matt Dowd, chief Republican strategist, put out a press release claiming the GOP expected Bush to be trailing by 15 points.  The Kerry camp responded almost immediately, indicating that voters had “already made up their minds relatively early in 2004,” so the lead would be minimal.

Bush overexaggerates the numbers, and Kerry counters by downplaying the predictions.

Plouffe is playing the game.  Here is his assessment of the Democratic gain in polling predictions, clearly downplaying the Democratic prospects:

Plouffe, speaking to reporters at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, argued that Democrats are turning their trajectory around and are poised, 26 days out, to fare better Nov. 2 than it appeared they would last month. But he said he expected Democrats to “show progress gradually,” in contrast with Republicans who have “maxed out or close to it.”

In 2010, what we see is a massive GOP lead in the polls, and the response by the Democrat strategist Plouffe is the following:

1. He vastly hypes the expectations of the Republican success.
2. In the wake of recent polling showing a Democrat gain, he downplays the significance of the statistics.

In this case, his statements on both of these points are actually probably true predictions.  But it does not matter.  You can rest assured that it is merely convenient that his tactics coincide with reality.  Were these predictions invalid, you can count on the same statements being made.

Strategically, putting greater pressure on Republicans by framing success in terms of all out victory makes sense.  It also downplays the chances of Democrats even more significantly, giving them the chance to make the well documented come-back.

But Plouffe is not alone in playing on expectations.  As mentioned earlier in this post, the many Republican strategists do not predict a Senate takeover.  But such a success is a very real possibility.  Is this simply pessimistic analysis?  No.  It’s just part of the game.

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No, its not a trick.  He’s trying to turn himself into a Republican in every way possible except officially switching parties all together. Here’s a quote from the ad:

When George Bush proposed a Medicare prescription drug plan, Earl Pomeroy voted yes, putting seniors before party.”

Just for the record, he voted for Obamacare.  But of course what he did 3 years ago regarding Healthcare reform is more important, right?  Look, when it was convenient to be a Democrat and rail against George Bush, these people jumped at the chance.  But when its not?  When it’s unpopular to be associated with the party you claim to represent?

Well.. then you just pretend like you’re a Republican.  It’s amazing how this guys thinks he can get away with pretending to stand for Republican standards as a Democrat.  Doesn’t he see that this exact type of wishy washy, flip-flopping politics is the impetus for all the sentimate against the political establishment?

A recent TPM poll average shows Pomery with 45.5% support and his Republican adversary, Rick Berg with 47.1%.  Maybe he thinks he can steal a few percent by disguising himself as a Republican.  That might be a good thought, only the problem is we don’t have a population full of zombies.  People can actually think for themselves, and he doesn’t do a great job of hiding the hypocrisy of his campaign.  Its pretty insulting, quite frankly, and I’m sure the North Dakota voters won’t take kindly to an insult to their intelligence.

I do. And I miss ‘em.

So when it comes out that in Tony Blair’s new book there’s a story about how George W. Bush didn’t know who the Belgian guy was at the G-8 who ran his yap about all the stuff America ought to do, I start thinkin’ about the good ol’ days…

Now, we’re not fans of Michael Brown. There are things he obviously doesn’t want to talk about where his Katrina portfolio is concerned. The guy seemingly spent a whole lot of time worrying about how he looked on TV and what restaurant he was going to be dining at when, frankly, he should have been on camera in a sweat-soaked T-shirt with bags under his eyes and a peptic ulcer from pizza delivery and Burger King chowdowns in a command trailer.

That said, he does make good points.

Public relations is not, and has not been for some time, about the truth. Everything important is spun. Candor and honesty are considered evidence of stupidity these days, and while I wouldn’t say Brownie’s Katrina legacy was ruined by the fact that he had to spout lines handed down from the press office he’s right when he bemoans the fact that he looked like a dipstick by vomiting platitudes in the midst of a general nightmare.

And I can feel his pain about the “Yer doin’ a great job, Brownie” line that Bush laid on him. He’s correct that his facial expression conveyed the sense that he’d just had the equivalent of something large and uncomfortable entering his nether regions. If he’s not full of it about having just come from a meeting in which he laid out a laundry list of all the things that were screwed up with the response to Katrina when the presser where that line was born, then even if you think he’s an irredeemable dunce you can still sympathize.

Brown is also correct in noting that all the PR spin had the precise opposite effect it was designed to have. While the Bush White House was trying to portray an image of progress and control, media avails like the ones Brown was giving and CERTAINLY the ones his boss Michael Chertoff was giving conveyed instead a total lack of perspective or understanding of the situation on the ground. The legacy media, engaged as it was in an effort to destroy the president’s popularity anyway, seized on that disconnect and used it to feed their own narrative.

It’s worth noticing that while the Bush administration doesn’t come off well in its handling of Katrina there has been something of a rehabilitation. Bush bested the current president 50-35 among Louisianians in a recent survey comparing the handling of Katrina to the Gulf Oil Spill, and the state has been on a Republican voting binge ever since the storm – Mary Landrieu and Buddy Caldwell are the only two Democrats to win major statewide races in the last five years and even New Orleans’ congressional district flipped to the GOP. I would submit that while all this would have happened anyway, it was a king’s ransom in federal money and, perhaps most importantly, the institution of a strong figure on the ground folks could rally around like Gen. Russell Honore – which Brown also notes is important in handling crises like this – which helped mitigate the damage. Honore was not a spewer of talking points, for certain; the press flacks probably had aneurisms when he uncorked his memorable “stuck on stupid” line.

And along the same lines, the storm about Obama’s handling of the oil spill has largely dissipated. Why? Two reasons. First, obviously, BP managed to stop the leak at the Macondo well and as it turns out Mother Nature has managed to remove an enormous, almost miraculous, amount of that oil – making the size of the calamity a lot less than originally advertised. But second, the president and his White House flacks stopped trying to micromanage the thing for political purposes. That was an unmitigated disaster; virtually every aspect of the president and his team’s interference in the spill made him look worse, and it also called attention to the fact that he wasn’t getting anything done.

Eventually, Obama’s people realized they were making the hole deeper, and so they got out of the way and let Thad Allen take over. Allen isn’t perfect by any means, but he’s at least on the ground and dealing daily with the players involved. There is now an organizational chart which, while it might not make sense, doesn’t reflect the top-down arrogance-induced chaos we saw in May and June and assisted in trashing the president’s poll ratings.

The gist of all this? While Brown probably was never in a position to fix anything he might well have at least done us the service of pointing out some of the flaws in our conventional thinking about crisis management. We have two expectations which set our leaders up for failure; first, that we’re going to be told that everything which needs to be done is being done, that there are no problems which can’t be overcome and we’re in control, and second, that the “head man” is going to provide all the answers and demonstrate perfect leadership.

Both are dead wrong.

Crisis communication shouldn’t be about assuming control of a disaster; it should be about defining the task and laying out a strategy to deal with it. That might invite criticism, but at least it’s honest. And coupled with the flexibility and humility to accept input from those affected, perhaps it might bring the public at large into a collective effort to recover from a hurricane, an oil spill, an earthquake or whatever.

And this business of expecting solutions and leadership from the very top is absolute poison. It’s poison when you’re talking about the economy – as Obama’s fiddling about with bailouts and stimulus is proving for the umpteenth time – and it’s poison when you’re talking about a crisis. Politicians don’t know how to handle these things, and everybody knows it. Successful command of them involves relying on the people who do. Obama himself said “I can’t plug the leak.” Neither could the Bush White House. But both administrations initially made the mistake of attempting to “own” their respective Gulf crises, rather than focus on putting quality people in charge and then giving them the resources and freedom to get the job done.

I think it was Ronald Reagan, though he wasn’t likely the first, who said “It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” That quote shows the value of humility in important situations. Brown might not be the best ambassador for humility given his Katrina reputation, but some of what he says might contribute to our understanding of how these incidents are best handled.

This is quality stuff, and it can generate a quality discussion. We like it when the Republicans actually talk about the future of the country instead of playing stupid gotcha games on who’s sleeping with whom and so on (it’s inevitable that stuff like that will happen in a primary, but general elections need to be about differing visions for the city, state or country). And the ad does so, in a fashion.

Because Senate candidates like Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Ron Johnson, Rob Portman and Ken Buck might be of various levels of physical attractiveness, they might come from backgrounds the legacy media would disparage as not suitably Ivy League and they might occasionally make a gaffe. But those candidates represent the first sizable batch of true small-government conservatives – and a departure from the “Me, too” Richard Lugar/Bob Bennett/Lindsey Graham/Susan Collins gang already ensconced in Washington – to come along since 1994. They share a philosophy which has its roots in that of our Founders, and the far Left has no choice but to call them extreme.

But in the Age Of Obama, when religion is to be despised unless it’s Islam, when American exceptionalism is only acceptable when it’s apologized for as unexceptional, when class warfare is so entrenched as government policy that the world’s highest business taxes are non-negotiable among the party in power, when the concept of federalism is so perverted that a state passing a law to mirror federal legislation finds itself on the business end of a Justice Department lawsuit, what Democrats and their allies in the legacy media term “extreme” is embraced by large portions of the public. And the Republican candidates they disparage merely represent the will of the American people who are disgusted with the statism, arrogance and corruption of the ruling class and seek to rein it in.

This will be a signature election cycle. Most pollsters are now showing a GOP takeover in the House and the previously-unthinkable possibility of a Republican Senate majority is now within the realm of possibility. But what is perhaps even more important is what the new Senators and congressmen the 2010 cycle produces will mean for the Republican Party. A Rubio replacing Mel Martinez or a Lee replacing Bennett will force the party’s Beltway wing to accept that the GOP can no longer slide by as a friendly repository for K Street dollars or be complicit in inching the country leftward; the new additions will drive the party away from the politics of its disgraceful Bush-era big-government “conservatism.”

Because polls repeatedly show that it’s not Lee, Angle, Paul or Rubio who are “fringe.” Their positions are favored, in large measure, by majorities or pluralities of the American people. The fringe is in Washington, New York, Hollywood and the halls of academia. The fringe is governing, and it’s being rejected.

But now I’m going to offer up something I do like. Which is this.

The picture is of President Bush and the former First Lady, who drove out to DFW Airport to greet troops who were arriving home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s a nice gesture. At the end of the day, for whatever mistakes he might have made (and Bush made less in eight years than his successor has made in 18 months; you can bet your sweet bippy on that), Bush is a legitimately good guy. A little goofy, doesn’t speak well, probably a mediocre president, fine - but a good guy who was unfairly treated by the Left.

One mistake you really don’t want to make is to get into a discussion with somebody who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan where you’re trashing Bush. A lot of those folks don’t like that. He’s VERY popular with the troops, because they know he was behind them 100 percent. The current guy? Not so much.

As it was then, and currently stands for the next 6 years, Louisiana receives royalties up to 3 miles from the coast, which is state waters, but nothing after that in federal waters.

In 2006, then-Rep. Bobby Jindal authored a House Bill to provide Gulf Coast states with at least 50% of oil & gas royalties from federal waters off their respective coasts.  The bill overwhelmingly passed the House, even with bi-partisan support.

However, President Bush, who had not once vetoed a single bill at that point of his tenure, threatened to do so, citing the national fiscal concerns of such a proposal.  Meanwhile Bush, along with big-spending Republicans and Democrats in Congress, made no real attempts to discontinue their reckless deficit spending.

Finally a “compromise” bill was offered by Sen. Landrieu, whereby Gulf States would receive 37.5% of the royalties from federal waters off their coasts, but not effective until 2016.

Port Fourchon alone furnishes between 16-18% of the oil supply for the entire country.  Roughly one-third of U.S. oil production is from offshore production, and 80% of that production is from off our state’s coast.  More than one-fourth of the nation’s oil production comes from off the Louisiana coastline.  Our reserves account for almost 20% of all the U.S. oil reserves, and we also hold 10% of the nation’s natural gas reserves.

We assume risk that other NIMBY states choose not to take in order to help with domestic production of oil and natural gas, yet until 2016, we will get nothing from production more than 3 miles off our coast, and after that, will only receive 37.5%.  Meanwhile, those same states get to enjoy the fruits of offshore royalties pouring into the federal treasury. 

Many ignorant talking-heads and politicians claim that Louisiana’s coastal problems are a result of our “dancing” with the oil & gas industry, saying the industry is killing our vast seafood and marine life.

Here is a clue for those people.  We have a 6,000-7,000 square mile Dead Zone in the Gulf right off our coast, where no marine life can survive.  The cause of this huge dead area is NOT oil & gas exploration.  Rather, it is due to farm “run-off”, chemicals pouring into the Mississippi River, then being dumped into the Gulf.  Your farm chemicals have done more damage to our marine resources than all the exploration in the Gulf would ever accomplish.

Louisiana needs to demand that we stopped being treated as the rear-end of the country.  Your state doesn’t want to help produce domestic petroleum.  Fine.  But neither should you reap the benefits of offshore royalties from Gulf of Mexico production.

It is time for our delegation in Washington, D.C. to fight the offshore royalties battle again.  Yes, we scored a minor victory with Landrieu’s Senate bill almost three years ago, but the monies will be too little for what our coast provides, and certainly too late.  If the current President and his closest political allies have their way, we won’t be drilling in the Gulf of Mexico by 2016 anyway.

This is not a Republican/Democrat issue.  Louisiana deserves a greater share of royalties for our risk, and we deserve them now.  Unfortunately, the President Obama and Congressmen from other states, will argue about fiscal concerns, while we continue to bail out other industries and state governments.

 Nick Bouterie works in the oil & gas industry and lives in Iota.

“Leadership” is defined by Dictionary.com as providing guidance and direction.  “Bureaucracy” is defined as an administration characterized by excessive red tape and routine.

Ours is supposedly a government of compassion.  The Democratic Party, the party in power, represents itself as the party that cares about people, yet when our coast is threatened by the largest oil spill in the history of the country, our leader can’t make a decision, nor are his people empowered to. 

How does a leader act in a time of crisis?  Christopher Chantrill cited a perfect example this morning at American Thinker:

What do you do when things go wrong? Obviously you cannot run all problems up the hierarchy for a decision. You must push decision-making power downwards to the people closer to the action.

You must do what Wal-Mart did before the original Hurricane Katrina. CEO Lee Scott sent the word out to Wal-Mart’s people in the New Orleans area: “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.”

We cannot know whether CEO Scott really trusted his people. But in the emergency, he had no choice. He told his people that he trusted them to do the right thing, and he left it to them to make the right decisions.

Gov. Jindal responded to the spill by, among other actions, asking the Corps of Engineers to approve the construction of sand berms to capture oil as it approached our barrier islands.  The Corps spent three weeks evaluating the environmental impact of the proposal, when they should have only required five minutes to consider the environmental impact of declining that request.  Someone in the field should have been empowered to make such a decision, quickly and without fear of retribution, but bureaucracies don’t work that way.  Now we have oil in the marshes, and finally a commitment from the Corps to build a few test berms to “evaluate their effectiveness.” 

George W. Bush was castrated because his government took three days to get federal aid flowing into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Barack Obama takes six weeks to approve the construction of five berms as a test.

For a sense of perspective, in those three days when Bush was doing “nothing,” the U.S. Army was moving entire units into Louisiana from as far away as Kentucky, the Coast Guard was rescuing from twenty to thirty thousand trapped flood victims, and FEMA was launching the mammoth logistical effort to move the materials necessary for recovery. So what did Bush do wrong again? Looked out a plane window, you say?  (J. R. Dunn, also at American Thinker)

What has Mr. Obama been doing during this time of crisis?  Well, he had a vacation in North Carolina.  He spent Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, his first opportunity to sleep in his own bed since the inauguration.  And he had Paul McCartney serenade his first lady at the White House.  “Michelle, ma belle…”

There have been several Congressional hearings to try to assess blame.  Attorney General Holder has loosed hordes of Justice Department lawyers to start prosecuting the criminals.

These are not examples of the kind of leadership that expediently resolves a crisis.

It has oft been cited that this crisis is British Petroleum’s responsibility.  That is not literally correct. 

The costs are theirs to bear. 

Period.

We’ve said here before that the administration did the correct thing in leaving the oil companies (yes, plural) in charge of stopping the flow of oil from the well.  Nowhere is there greater expertise to address that crisis, and experts from throughout the industry are assembled and are working feverishly to accomplish that feat, recognizing that they are creating new technology on the fly, as this has never happened in 5000 feet of water.  (And as others have noted, we’d not be in 5000 feet of water had Carter/Clinton/Gore/Obama environmentalists not pushed the exploration companies out there.  We would be on land, or in water shallow enough for real people, divers, to be doing the work rather than Remotely Operated Vehicles.)

But responding to the environmental threat was the responsibility of our government.  All BP is responsible for is writing the checks.  A plan had been drawn up years ago, so a response could be swift, but the equipment that plan called for, fire booms to capture and burn the oil, was nowhere to be found.

We have not seen leadership from our government during this time of crisis, but rather we have seen politics.  This crisis has afforded the administration an opportunity to once again tout its “green jobs” initiative, and to prepare for yet another attempt at getting some form of “cap and trade” legislation through the Senate.  Rather than taking actions to address the loss of livelihood and of a very way of life, they are placing new deep water drilling on a six month hold, further damaging the economy of our state which is already taking the brunt of the blow!

And we will not forget the eleven lives that were lost when this crisis started.  Mr. Obama will host their families at the White House later this week, no doubt amid much fanfare, it was announced last week.  Where is the leadership, the compassion, in a man who waits six weeks to realize he has committed a political gaffe in not addressing their loss sooner? 

The leader is a paradigm.  The paradigm we have seen is one of indifference if not incompetence, politics rather than governance, and bureaucracy rather than empowerment.

The response to the oil spill in the Gulf is a perfect example of management by bureaucracy – government too big to respond in a crisis.  And the present administration and Congress are determined to make it bigger.

The paradigm needs to shift.

In case you can’t make out his cockney mumbling, what McCartney said was “After the last eight years, it’s great to have a President who knows what a library is.”

McCartney, of course, comes from exceedingly meager academic accomplishments, having graduated from the College Of None. Former president George W. Bush, whose wife is a librarian by trade, holds an MBA from Harvard. Seems like McCartney might have blazed through that knowledge at the airport in Amsterdam.

House Republican leader John Boehner demanded an apology from McCartney, one which will come in the reign of Queen Dick:

“Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House,” Boehner told HUMAN EVENTS. “I hope he’ll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama.”

The McCartney epidose came after this highlight of President Barack “I will not rest until this spill is fixed” Obama’s singing “Hey Jude” with the assembled hoi-polloi…