September 30, 2008, 3:53 P.M.

Kevin,

Leadership crisis is right, I’m thinking we need someone like Bill Parcells or Bobby Knight to take over. Can you imagine Coach Parcells if he heard the “Speaker Pelosi hurt my feelings with her awful partisanship” excuse? I can:

Oh, what you’re trying to say is that your feelings were hurt? Your feelings! You are not paid to have goddamn feelings, you are paid to help govern your country! Boo-hoo, the girl was mean and my constituents say they’re not going to vote for me, I have to let the entire economy burn to the ground or I lose my pissant job. You’re a bunch of worthless pussies. Now get in there and vote like men.

You’ve also hit on the magic formula for determining the best course of action when the actual issues are too complicated to figure out, find out which side the dummies are on and go the other way. I always figured that if I ever by some stroke of good fortune became head coach of the Chicago Bears I would simply do the opposite of whatever the callers to sports talk radio want me to do. If someone has the time to wait on hold for an hour in the middle of the day just to say, “Kyle Orton sucks,” I’m thinking they’re not spending a lot of time on the nuances of the game. In fact, I think I heard this on a recent call to Chicago station, The Score.

“Uh, yeah, hey. Look, the Bears running game is really crappy, so what I’m thinking is that we reanimate the corpse of Walter Payton and bring him in on some third downs, or maybe even some quarterback. I just wanted to know what you guys think about that and so I’ll hang up and take my answer off the air.”

The trouble in Congress is that the asylum has only inmates and there isn’t a grown-up or a head coach in view. You kind of get the feeling that Bush is just ready to quit early, and unlike being Vice-President, there are no real qualifications for the job of a United States representative and some of them appear to be serious dummies.

Barack Obama seems to be edging toward a more central leadership role on passing the bill, which may carry some reward, but also significant risk, kind of like ordering the steak fresco chalupa at Taco Bell. You may be biting into a zesty taste of crunchy goodness. Or, you might be looking at a case of the loosy poos.

All credit to Obama if he takes this on, but if there’s anything at this point that can reverse his recent gains, this might be it.

—John

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