The Rope-A-Dope

Dear President Obama,

My husband is worried, but I am not as worried, and overall, this worries me.  If you can make sense of that sentence, then you probably are a genius.

But the problem with genius sometimes is that it exists in rarified ivory towers where it is only recognized by people with similar gifts.  For the rest of us mere mortals, we can respect it from afar...but we never get close enough to it to really appreciate its beauty.

And this is where I think we are--at a moment where only those people who get to bask in the aura of your genius truly understand.  The rest of us are baffled.

It was your 50th birthday last week, and all you got was a debt ceiling increase wrapped in oily newspaper.  Then the nation's credit got downgraded and the stock market tanked.  Could those have been the worse presents since Homer's bowling ball?



Here is the irony of that reference--Homer gave Marge a bowling ball with his name on it and to teach him a lesson, Marge took bowling lessons.  Mr. President, are you about to take up bowling?

In our conversation, I suggested to the husband that there are several things you need to do in order to avoid having a Jimmy Carter presidency.  The first is to make nice with your base, starting with the Congressional Black Caucus.  I have a feeling that they will not be eating any more sugar-coated Satan sandwiches.  And ditto for the Congressional Hispanic and Progressive Caucus members.  The second is to invite Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz over for drinks (preferably not tea, if you catch my drift).  And third, you need to get pundits like Ed Rendell and Harold Ford off of Morning Joe and instead, put them to work as spokesmen for your Administration because the folks you have right now are killing us.

In other words, Mr. President, it is time to throw a punch.

Back in 1974, George Foreman was the World Heavyweight champion, and Muhammed Ali was the former champion.  As the story goes, Ali trained for the fight by allowing his sparring partners to beat on him, and pretty much allowed the same scenario to play out in the ring during the match.  However, once Foreman became visibly tired, Ali began fighting back and ultimately won the title.  So Mr. President, I beseech you to throw a punch.

You see, most of the people who remember the Rumble in the Jungle are seniors and they might be a little pissed that Medicare and Social Security were bargaining chips in the debt ceiling debate.  And anyone who is not old enough to remember the fight, but who might remember Ali as the champ and George Foreman before he started selling sandwich makers--we might not be all that inspired since those were our portfolios that took a shellacking today on Wall Street.  Then there are the legions of college students whose excitement helped to propel you to victory...well, none of them know anything about that fight, so they might stay home just because they are unsure if you are even relevant.

So what are you going to do?  My hope is that you will spend the rest of this month throwing jabs at your enemies while they have decamped to their districts.  You have the news cycle all to yourself for the rest of the month, so why not spend these next couple of weeks doing a little trash-talking?  If you recall, that was also an important part of Ali's strategy against Foreman, and it succeeded in pushing Foreman to throw even harder punches that only hastened his exhaustion.  Talk a little trash Mr. President so that FOX News can call your birthday party a Hip Hop BBQ since that is about the best comeback they can conjure up (because you're black and well, the monkey-eating-fried chicken/watermelon jokes are not that funny anymore). 

The husband and I take comfort in the fact that the election is 15 months away and you can still turn this thing around.  After all, 15 months before your election, you were a total longshot and only the truest of true believers were betting on you.  Make us believe again, Mr. President.