Sitting in his Palm Beach mansion, a storm-weary South Floridian, Rush Limbaugh is right to scoff at the nation's reaction to Hurricane Irene. He contends President Obama wanted the storm to be worse than it was, and he has a point.
Fears about the storm were way overblown. Who cares about a little flooding and destruction in that liberal elite enclave of Vermont? Obama should never have called the storm "extremely dangerous." No one needed to evacuate.
He's so damned pragmatic, this infernal president. Why does he have to plan ahead so well? All those people in Battery Park and the Outer Banks should have stood on their rooftops and watched the predicted floodwaters rise, just like the
good people of New Orleans during Katrina. Obama could have used a "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" moment. All good presidents need one.
The
oil spill in the Gulf, the uprisings in the Middle East, and the
national debt crisis are not enough to excuse this never-ending recession. What better excuse than a natural disaster? If Obama were lucky, Irene would have been so destructive that regular citizens would forget to file for unemployment. Clearly, the president was hoping Irene would be the perfect tragedy to boost his reelection chances.
Of course, the Republicans didn't want a hurricane to wreak havoc on the country, so they could blame Obama for the chaotic aftermath. No, they would never wish such a thing. And if they did and Obama surprised them by handling a crisis well, they certainly wouldn't whine about it on the radio. No way.
