Senator Barack (Government) Obama

By Rick Morris

In an apparent Freudian slip, John McCain referred to Barack Obama as “Senator Government” as he was making a point in the final presidential debate about how the Illinois junior senator is somebody who puts his supreme faith in government rather than the American people. I believe that the record bears this out and that Obama is somebody who believes that answers to solutions lie with our bureaucratic overlords in D.C. rather than with productive real-world citizens who work to create wealth for themselves and others. In fairness to Obama, he’s not alone in this regard – he’s the same as every Democrat candidate for president in the modern age who is in hock to left-wing ideology and the financial sway of government unions. And in further fairness to Obama, McCain, while promising to be pro-private sector now, has had a record far too similar to Obama’s in its obedience to Big Bad Gubmint.

Aside from a general appreciation for McCain’s slip of the tongue, I didn’t think much more about the designation, nor did I consider it to have enough meat on the bones for a column – until I came across something on a completely separate topic that convinced me otherwise.

I read something in a column by NFL Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green that I considered to be astounding. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I admire Green greatly as a player and as a person and that I thought his Hall of Fame induction speech a few months ago was very inspirational. He did not say anything stupid in any way in his column, so this is not criticism of him, but he made me aware of a reality by something he mentioned in a very offhand way.

He writes a blog about his old team, the Washington Redskins, on the Washington Times site. This past week, in the aftermath of the ‘Skins shocking choke-job against the woefully inferior Rams, he wrote the following in an optimistic note to the fanbase:

“The holiday weekend gave you an extra day to recover from the shock.”

I read that and I scratched my head. Holiday weekend? What was I missing here? I didn’t get a three-day weekend.

And then I quickly remembered: Columbus Day.

Still, how could that make any sense? I know a handful of people who were off on Monday, a tiny number who work at banks or various government offices. But that’s it – and chances are, unless you live around D.C., it’s the same for you.

However, D.C. is apparently on its own planet, one where a very smart person writing a column – who knows the metropolitan area intimately from decades of living there – makes what has to be a correct assumption that the vast majority of folks reading his blog were off on Monday because they are sucking at the federal teat.

And this is the planet that Barack Obama and his allies in what will most likely be an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress want to empower, the bureaucrats who seek ever-increasing levels of dominion over our lives here in Flyover Country. I’m not under any illusion that this point will be of any interest to the Obamunists who have already made up their minds in contravention of the facts. As somebody who makes it a point to educate himself about candidates and consequences prior to casting a presidential vote every four years, I do have to admit, though, that I’m going to be very impatient with anybody complaining about Obama’s election after the fact if they blew off his “Rah Rah Government” stance before November 4.