Peggy Noonan And Maureen Dowd Double-Team The President

Hooray, it's a Dowd-Nooners one-two punch! Oh, did 90 percent of the American people support expanding gunbuyer background checks at gun shows and on the Internet? And was it blocked by 42 Republican senators and Four Bad Dems? Sorry, but we think you meant it was blocked by OBAMA!!!! Why is Barack Obama so lame and undespotic that he cannot make Republicans vote how he wants? They have theories!

First up is Nooners, more in sadness than in anger, on Meet the Press babbling on about how B. Barry Bamz has trouble with "the levers of power." Doris Kearns Goodwin cannot even believe her ears. Isn't Peggy Noonan at least supposed to know what she is talking about? Hahahaha, good one, us.

Of course, Nooners' entire theory, came from "someone" at the New York Times, and that someone is Maureen Dowd, who literally uses her ex-boyfriend Aaron Sorkin's worst movie as a model for how a president should act, like, she doesn't even use The West Wing, but the terrible American President instead. WHY WON'T OBAMA BE MOAR FICTIONAL???

The White House should have created a war room full of charts with the names of pols they had to capture, like they had in “The American President.” Soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling.

Instead of the pit-bull legislative aides in Aaron Sorkin’s movie, Obama has Miguel Rodriguez, an arm-twister so genteel that The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker wrote recently that no one in Congress even knows who he is.

The president was oblivious to red-state Democrats facing tough elections. Bring the Alaskan Democrat Mark Begich to the White House residence, hand him a drink, and say, “How can we make this a bill you can vote for and defend?”

Also, he should have beaten up North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, in her face.

Sometimes you must leave the high road and fetch your brass knuckles. Obama should have called Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota over to the Oval Office and put on the squeeze: “Heidi, you’re brand new and you’re going to have a long career. You work with us, we’ll work with you. Public opinion is moving fast on this issue. The reason you get a six-year term is so you can have the guts to make tough votes. This is a totally defensible bill back home. It’s about background checks, nothing to do with access to guns. Heidi, you’re a mother. Think of those little kids dying in schoolrooms.”

And there you have it, everybody. Barack Obama is bad at his job because he did not kiss one Democrat's ass and beat up another. And when he and the American people get jumped by the NRA, we think we know whose fault it was: Obama's, and ours, for wearing that skirt.

Please give Maureen Dowd more Pulitzer prizes.

[ MediaMatters / NYT ]