How Can We Lose to This Idiot?

"No prudent antagonist thinks light of his adversaries."

 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German playwright

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer tells us about an old chess match in which Latvian grandmaster Aaron Nimzowitsch went ballistic when he lost to an opponent he felt was an inferior player:

"Upon losing a game at the 1925 Baden-Baden tournament, Aaron Nimzowitsch, the great chess theoretician and a superb player, knocked the pieces off the board, jumped on the table and screamed, 'How can I lose to this idiot?' "

He goes on to compare Nimzowitsch's outburst to that of the Dems in past election losses to Republican candidates:

"Mr. Nimzowitsch may have lived decades ago in Denmark, but had the soul of a modern American Democrat. After all, Democrats have been saying much the same--with similar body language--ever since the erudite Adlai Stevenson lost to the syntactically challenged Eisenhower in 1952. They said it again when they lost to that supposed simpleton Reagan. Twice, would you believe. With George W. Bush, they are at it again, and equally apoplectic."

Krauthammer believes that vanity and revenge are driving forces in the Democrats' scorn for Bush. Vanity, because they believe their candidate is intellectually and morally superior to the president, and revenge because they believe that Dubya stole the 2000 election. He feels that other forces are at work too:

"But that is not enough to account for the level of venom today. It is not often that a losing presidential candidate (Al Gore) compares the man who defeated him to both Hitler and Stalin. It is not often that a senior party leader (Edward Kennedy) accuses a sitting president of starting a war ('cooked up in Texas') in order to gain political advantage for his re-election.

The loathing goes far beyond the politicians. Liberals as a body have gone quite around the twist. I count one all-star rock tour, three movies, four current theatrical productions and five best sellers (a full one-third of the New York Times list) variously devoted to ridiculing, denigrating, attacking and devaluing this president, this presidency and all who might, God knows why, support it."

Mr. Krauthammer then humorously suggests that the hissing, sneering, ridicule and derision being heaped on President Bush is being caused by the "Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release." What is that, you may ask?

It really boils down to his belief that the Dems were not permitted, because of the events of 9/11, to adequately vent their hostility and anger about the unfairness of what happened in Florida in November, 2000:

"How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief?"

But then things began happening that gave them some justification for allowing their disdain to re-surface:

"The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMD's, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq...

The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is re-elected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy."

What if he does win? How will his Democratic opponents react? I doubt that any of them will require therapy, as Krauthammer suggests, but there are going to be a lot of long faces and four years is a long time to stay sad. On the other hand, if their man Kerry wins, the long faces will belong to the Republicans and all good Democrats would probably say that's who should be wearing them. My Democratic friends have told me as much. 

Undeterred by this stubborn pig-headedness, I occasionally make my pitch for Bush to any of them who will listen. The other day after I had just finished explaining to one of them the benefits of re-electing the president, he smiled and said, "We've suffered long enough, haven't we?" I'm not sure if he was talking about Bush or me, but obviously, he was neither impressed nor convinced by my outstanding argument.

I tactfully reminded him that he's only had to endure four years of my man. I endured eight years of his. We laughed, finished our burgers and headed for the first tee.