Bye-Bye Limbaugh and Beck?

Forty years ago, a line of actors and actresses came out on a Manhattan stage and dropped their robes to face the audience naked. My reaction then was "That's interesting, now what else have you got?"

As it turned out, very little. Despite sketches by Samuel Beckett, John Lennon and other literati, "Oh Calcutta" was deemed "sophomoric and soporific" by a New York Times critic and remains memorable only for crossing a cultural threshold of public nudity.

It comes to mind now as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, two figures who strip their psyches bare in a new era, seem to be imploding after showing us everything they've got and bumping up against possible boredom with their act.

After a disastrous (in his own word, wasted) hour of bear-baiting Democratic pariah Eric Massa (akin to shooting fish in a barrel and missing), Beck now finds himself under fire from evangelical leaders for equating Christian social justice with Nazism and Communism.

"When Glenn Beck is asking Christians to leave their churches, the Catholic Church, the black churches, Hispanic, evangelical, to leave all our churches," says the head of Sojourners, a Christian networking group, "I'm saying it's time for Christians to leave the Glenn Beck show."

Beck's desperation is echoed in Limbaugh's promise to leave the country if health care reform is passed. With his huge audience and contract, El Rushbo won't be going anywhere soon but his threat is symptomatic of the pressure felt by extreme figures to keep pushing the boundaries of expression.

Their plight brings up another image from the last century. In the early days of TV, a civil-rights leader described a dilemma:

"At dimly-lit open-air rallies each night, the speaker's face lights up in the glare of photofloods during those passages a cameraman thinks most likely to win ten seconds of network time. The lights go off abruptly when the cameraman's interest flags, leaving the speaker blinking in the dark, and fishing for another, even more startling statement to bring the lights back on."

Beck and Limbaugh, like their counterparts on the Left, keep fishing for ever more startling statements to hold our interest, but in a time when politicians say and do the unthinkable daily, it's getting harder to stay in the spotlight.

The only novelty left would be public figures coming on stage fully clothed and speaking with civility, but so far Barack Obama's act is only attracting a bare majority of the audience.

Dowd's Date With Limbaugh

In the annals of sexual politics and odd couples, none could ever match the possibilities of mating Maureen Dowd and Rush Limbaugh, a power pairing that would have made Mary Matalin and James Carville look like America's Sweethearts.

The image comes to mind from Dowd's column today, recounting a four-hour dinner at Manhattan's 21 Club back when she was "a reportette" and El Rushbo's puss had not yet been carved on the Mt. Rushmore of the Rabid Right.

"He was charming, in a shy, awkward, lonely-guy way," Dowd recalls. "Not a man of the people. He arrived in a chauffeured town car and ordered $70-an-ounce Beluga, Porterhouse and 1990 Corton-Charlemagne."

Just another suave type trying to look good on a first date and apparently making some headway, impressing Dowd as "not a Neanderthal, though he did have a cold and blew his nose in his napkin. He talked about Chopin’s Polonaise No. 6, C.S. Lewis and how much he loved the end of the movie 'Love Story.'"

That last should have given Dowd pause if she recalled that the heroine of the 1970 weeper is "smart and poor," falls for a guy who is "stupid and rich" and dies an early death murmuring "Love is never having to say you're sorry."

But the chemistry apparently failed, depriving the world of a match that would have made media history.

Now Dowd is hammering her might-have-been mate with rueful memories:

"At our long-ago dinner, Limbaugh credited his success with being 'one-dimensional.' 'I’m totally concerned with me,' he said. And that was way before he got a contract for $400 million, so we can only imagine how one-dimensional he is now.

"But on Sunday, he ripped the president for having 'an out-of-this-world ego,' for being 'very narcissistic,' 'immature, inexperienced, in over his head.' (Isn’t immaturity scoring OxyContin from your maid?)

"It gives new meaning to pot, kettle and black."

Ouch. Love hurts.

Limbaugh: Buying Into Brain Damage

Al Sharpton has his knickers in a twist over news that Rush Limbaugh is trying to acquire the National Football League franchise in St. Louis, but with all due respect, the Reverend and other protesters fail to see the internal logic of such a move.

With the recent revelation that NFL retirees, as a result of being hit in the head so often, are more susceptible to brain disease and early Alzheimer's than the rest of the population, it seems only natural that El Rushbo invest in the League some of the proceeds from his $400 million contract for pounding to pulp the neurons of his devoted listeners.

Rev. Sharpton and the director of the NFL Players Association are complaining that "sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends. Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred."

But NFL players are paid to hammer one another mercilessly, much as Limbaugh does to liberals. Overcoming division and hatred is more the province of basketball players like the man in the White House.

Life's Late-Night Nobel Comics

Those too mesmerized by baseball playoffs to watch Letterman, Conan et al last night did not miss much. All day long politicians had been doing stand-ups about Obama's Nobel Prize.

The President himself led off his Rose Garden turn with "Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, 'Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!' And then Sasha added, 'Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.' So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective."

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele came back to crack, "President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action” as Rush Limbaugh chimed in, "“Can you imagine, folks, how big Obama’s head is today? I think it’s getting so big that his ears actually fit.”

Poor taste was bipartisan as a State Department spokesman got off a one-liner about George W. Bush, "From our standpoint, you know, we think that this gives us a sense of momentum when the United States has accolades tossed its way, rather than shoes."

Last year's short-term Republican star Mike Huckabee tried for dry humor:

"There will be an outcry from those on the right who will say that Obama's nomination, made two weeks into his Presidency, is impossible to justify but I think such an outcry will sound like right-wing whining. The better response is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as President that merited such recognition."

William Kristol announced that the Weekly Standard would skip its usual "Parody Page" to publish news of Obama's prize, which was more ridiculous than anything his editors could make up.

In his cogent parsing of Obama's response, James Fallows alludes to a fellow former Jimmy Carter speechwriter's attempt at a Letterman Top Ten of Fox News' responses to the award, including "Besides, who cares what a bunch of geeks in Oslo think? The International Olympic Committee speaks for the whole world."

Old-time comic Jimmy Durante used to complain, "Everybody wants to get into da act!" Even former President of Poland Lech Waleska, who won the Nobel in 1983, came out of the wings to say, "“Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast--he hasn’t had the time to do anything yet.”

That wasn't as witty as some, but then again we all know about Polish jokes. Maybe something was lost in the translation.

Jeremiah Wright to the Rescue

With the killings of a Kansas abortion doctor and at the Holocaust Museum, group hatred in this year of Change was losing its bipartisan flavor, but here comes Barack Obama's former pastor from stage left to restore some balance and, insofar as the subject allows, comic relief.

As usual, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's entrance involves tongue-tripping. After telling a reporter that "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me," Rev. Wright has clarified his estrangement from the President to explain that he meant "Zionists," which of course makes all the difference in the world to such Obama advisers of the Hebrew persuasion as Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod.

Even if, as the President keeps saying, words matter, Wright's bombast can't be equated with bullets from the Far Right, but it can serve as a reminder that reductive stupidity and scapegoating come from all directions in American society, as they always have.

The flavor of the day in zeitgests is what Paul Krugman calls "The Big Hate," an upsurge of "right-wing extremism...being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment."

But given the coincidence of widespread economic fears and the installation of an African-American president, it doesn't take Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck et al to revive traditional American mistrust of "others" and blame them for misfortunes.

Yes, there were hateful words behind the actions of those lone demented gunmen, but Rev. Wright's reappearance provides a moment of déjà vu that such talk does not inevitably lead to disastrous actions.

Barack Obama overcame it to win the White House, and what he is doing there will determine the future. Meanwhile, as the old Arab proverb says, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

Court's "Miss Congeniality" Contest

Heartbreaking news for Antonin Scalia (irony alert): His reputation as the warmest, fuzziest Justice may be endangered by Barack Obama's new choice.

"Sotomayor’s Sharp Tongue Raises Issue of Temperament" is a New York Times headline, reporting the Supreme Court nominee's "occasionally combative manner--some lawyers have described her as 'difficult' and 'nasty'--raises questions about her judicial temperament and willingness to listen."

The message is that Judge Sotomayor is no pussycat. Shades of Lupe Velez, who starred in those "Mexican Spitfire" movies before World War II! Back then, audiences were highly entertained by the antics of an explosive, volatile Latina, who paraded her emotions to comic effect. But those days are long gone, along with the old stereotype of black men as lazy, shiftless Stepin Fetchits...aren't they?

Further down in the Times story, the verdict on Sotomayor is downgraded to "brilliant" and "assertive" with the observation by a male judge, a former dean of the Yale Law School, “Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman. It was sexist, plain and simple.”

Be that as it may, the debate over Obama's nominee promises to be as enlightening as an "American Idol" competition, with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich leading the way by suggesting that Judge Sotomayor is a "racist ."

Even if Scalia hasn't, the standup comics have clearly met their match.

Steele, the Un-Obama

Some divine Anthropologist must be balancing the racial books for America, giving us an African-American as president who is a superbly talented politician and, to lead the opposition, another who can't seem to get out of his own way.

Michael Steele's un-Obama skills were on display at a party luncheon yesterday, and the Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports:

"The RNC chairman has managed to get into trouble with comic regularity during his first few months on the job. His latest brush with trouble had come only minutes before the lunch, when Fox News broadcast an interview with Steele in which he complained that party leaders--the very people he was about to have lunch with--have 'their knives bared' for him."

Milbank catalogues Steele's self-inflicted wounds as head of the Disloyal Opposition:

"He called Rush Limbaugh 'incendiary' and 'ugly.' He described abortion as an individual choice. He spent $18,500 decorating his office, which he had called 'way too male for me.' He offered some 'slum love' to Indian American Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, and speculated that the GOP base rejected Mitt Romney 'because it had issues with Mormonism.'"

In fairness, it's unlikely that anyone could galvanize today's remnant rabble of what was once the Grand Old Party, but Steele's ineptitude is looking more and more like a grotesque example of the Affirmative Action that Republicans always used to denounce.

The question now is how to depose him without adding accusations of racism to their heavy load of political baggage.

The opportunity may come up today at a meeting of state party heads who, if they curtail his power over funding, will be calling his threat to quit if they do.

Steele ended his rallying of the troops at yesterday's luncheon with "In the best spirit of President Reagan, it's time to saddle up and ride."

Into the sunset perhaps?

Cheney's Media Torture

After eight years in the Bush bunker, the former Vice-President is out waterboarding voters with interviews to make them confess that electing Barack Obama was a plot to subvert national security.

Dick Cheney capped his first hundred days as a voluble has-been with a "Face the Nation" appearance yesterday to illustrate Murray Kempton's classic definition of politicians as generals who watch the battle from afar and come down afterward to shoot the wounded.

His main target was a real general, Colin Powell, whose injuries leading up to the Iraq war were inflicted by Cheney's own twisted Scooter Libby intelligence used in Powell's speech to persuade the UN that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.

Asked to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to represent Republican principles, Cheney did not hesitate to side with The Mouth, saying "my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican."

More and more, Cheney is looking like one of those Japanese soldiers discovered in caves long after World War II ended to emerge blinking in the daylight, convinced that their emperor was still on the throne. The difference is that they slunk off in silence, too shamed to be giving interviews.

Obama's Bad 100 Days

As good newspapers die across the country, Rupert Murdoch is keeping alive one of the worst, the New York Post, to publish such gems as this weekend's "100 Days, 100 Mistakes" of "Obama's short, error-prone time in office."

Using such unimpeachable sources as Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Murdoch's own Sky News, the President is accused, among other acts of malfeasance, of overusing the teleprompter, sending his daughters to a private school, not adopting a dog from an animal shelter and having Rahm Emanuel criticize Rush Limbaugh.

No. 100 is telling a Democratic congressman who voted against the stimulus bill, "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."

Murdoch apparently is, too, and journalism buffs are breathlessly awaiting the lists of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Twaddle About Obama's Toughness

Lyndon Johnson's appraisal of Richard Nixon comes to mind in the growing debate about President Obama's toughness or lack thereof.

"Not much here," said LBJ, pointing at his head. "Even less here," touching his heart, then lowering a hand to below his belt: "But enough down there."

Now there is clucking on both the Right and Left about how much Obama has "down there."

"In some of his earliest skirmishes," the New York Times worries, "Mr. Obama eventually chose pragmatism over fisticuffs" and quotes a former Clinton official: “The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for. The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy. It’s hard to think of a place where he’s taken a really hard position.”

Say what? Ramming through a stimulus bill and budget that could make or break his presidency? Pushing auto makers to the brink of bankruptcy if they fail to shape up? Ordering use of force to rescue an American captain in the Indian Ocean (too much, by Rush Limbaugh's lights)? Making public the torture memos (risky, says Bush's CIA chief as those on the Left complain about his refusal to prosecute former agents)?

The critics are confusing bluster with toughness. Republican Sen. John Ensign huffs, "I think it was irresponsible for the president to be seen kind of laughing and joking with Hugo Chavez" this weekend, but Obama shrugs off such posturing as politics that makes "no sense."

During the campaign, Maureen Dowd had asked Obama, "Do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.”

“When I get into a tussle,” he answered, “I want it to be over something real, not something manufactured. If someone wants to get in an argument with me, let’s argue about how we’re going to fix the health care system or where we need to go on Iraq.”

Critics of all persuasions will have to learn to live with the style of a President who doesn't puff himself up as the Decider but actually goes about the hard work of making decisions by consensus if he can but unilaterally when he must.

Limbaugh and Lee Harvey Oswald's Mother

"President Obama Ordered the Killing of Three Black Muslim Kids" is his own headline for this week's Rush Limbaugh rant about the weekend rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips from Indian Ocean pirates:

"You know what we have learned about the Somali pirates, the merchant marine organizers that were wiped out at the order of Barack Obama, you know what we learned about them? They were teenagers. The Somali pirates, the merchant marine organizers who took a US merchant captain hostage for five days were inexperienced youths, the defense secretary, Roberts Gates, said yesterday, adding that the hijackers were between 17 and 19 years old. Now, just imagine the hue and cry had a Republican president ordered the shooting of black teenagers on the high seas."

Trying to imagine is hard, but the boggled mind eventually finds a precedent for Limbaugh's brand of logic in the reaction of Lee Harvey Oswald's mother when she was called to testify before the Warren Commission about her son's assassination of JFK.

Mrs. Oswald was miffed, she told reporters, about not being invited to the White House by Lady Bird Johnson, the new First Lady. "After all," she explained, "my son was killed in the same incident in which her husband became president."

For my editorial sins, I later had to have several phone conversations with Mrs. Oswald, and her shaky cause-and-effect connections became even clearer as she pursued her celebrity career as "a mother in history," eventually capped by calling JFK's death a "mercy killing" because he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease.

As he expands his own role in our era, Limbaugh is in as much danger as Mrs. Oswald of losing sight of reality before launching into grandiose analogies.

"They were kids," he said this week. "The story is out, I don't know if it's true or not, but apparently the hijackers, these kids, the merchant marine organizers, Muslim kids, were upset, they wanted to just give the captain back and head home because they were running out of food, they were running out of fuel, they were surrounded by all these US Navy ships, big ships, and they just wanted out of there. That's the story, but then when one of them put a gun to the back of the captain, Mr. Phillips, then bam, bam, bam. There you have it, and three teenagers shot on the high seas at the order of President Obama."

Somewhere in loony heaven, Marguerite Oswald must be nodding in agreement.

Ayn Rand Rises Again

Who's next? Gordon Gekko?

As the economy crumbles, the usual cultural indicators of panic are on the rise--gun sales, survivalist talk and, of course, interest in the last century's loony goddess of selfishness.

"Ayn Rand," the Wall Street Journal reports, "died more than a quarter of a century ago, yet her name appears regularly in discussions of our current economic turmoil. Pundits including Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santelli urge listeners to read her books, and her magnum opus, 'Atlas Shrugged,' is selling at a faster rate today than at any time during its 51-year history."

The message of that turgid 1200-page opus, that money is the root of all good, has inspired those who need justification for extreme selfishness and for looking down at the rest of humanity as “looters” and “moochers.”

When it was first published, "Atlas Shrugged" was derided by both the right and left, but over the years, a few acolytes like Alan Greenspan and Ron Paul (who named his son Rand) have risen to prominence.

Now that Greenspan has helped devastate the economy, the president of the Rand Institute is proposing that only more of the same will save it:

"Why do we accept the budget-busting costs of a welfare state? Because it implements the moral ideal of self-sacrifice to the needy. Why do so few protest the endless regulatory burdens placed on businessmen? Because businessmen are pursuing their self-interest, which we have been taught is dangerous and immoral...

"The message is always the same: 'Selfishness is evil; sacrifice for the needs of others is good.' But Rand said this message is wrong--selfishness, rather than being evil, is a virtue."

For those who can tolerate such stuff, reading "Atlas Shrugged" is punishment enough. At least Gordon Gekko with his message of "Greed is good" in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" was an entertaining son-of-a-bitch who did not offer himself as an exemplar of a higher morality.

Memo to Rahm Emanuel

You've got it all wrong about Rush Limbaugh dictating Republican strategy. Actually it's David Brooks.

In his New York Times column this morning, Brooks writes: "The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is 'no.' They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand.

"If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.

"First, they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats...Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency. Robert Barro of Harvard estimates that there is a 30 percent chance of a depression."

After their weekly strategy meeting this morning, House Republicans sent out their attack puppy Eric Cantor to complain that Obama is not focusing enough on the economy:

"At the end of the day, we are in an economic emergency. Economists are saying that there's a 30 percent likelihood that we're going to be in a depression. My goodness, we do have an emergency, and we oughta say, look, priority No. 1 is to create jobs."

Boehner and his clueless bunch are showing better judgment about where to get their marching orders. Brooks is a big step up from Limbaugh.

Limbaugh/Rove: Separated at Birth?

If Spy Magazine had survived the Clinton era, its satire would have had a hard time competing with the news. What would the political pranksters have made of two rotund figures in the headlines this week?

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says with a straight face that Rush Limbaugh is the “voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”

Then Limbaugh lookalike Karl Rove complains on Fox News that Emanuel is practicing "old-style politics" in the White House:

"How does this serve the country for us at this point when we’re discussing these big, vital things like the budget and health care and the stimulus bill and the omnibus spending bill--how does it well serve the country for this little sideshow concocted in the chief of staff’s office in the West Wing?"

Rove, now a paid bloviator for Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek, is not in the same paycheck league as Limbaugh, who has a talk radio contract worth $400 million, but as the biggest gasbags in the conservative alternate reality, there are striking similarities.

Limbaugh is thriving on the negative notice from the White House and the backtracking Republican Chairman Michael Steele, and Rove is putting a brave face on the upcoming Congressional grilling about his role in firing US Attorneys for not being political enough, calling it a "show trial."

All that's missing is Spy showing them side by side and asking, "Separated at Birth?"

Makings of a Mismatch

Hearty laughs are so scarce these days that political observers should be grateful for news that John Boehner has ordered his House pygmies to attack President Obama directly instead of aiming their fire at Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a "triangulation" strategy.

Unleashing the likes of Eric Cantor and Mike Spence, who launched the effort by taking aim at Obama's campaign promise about earmarks, will remind old timers of the movie, "The Mouse That Roared," in which the world's smallest nation, on the brink of bankruptcy, attacks the US with a handful of warriors in chain mail and carrying long bows, to get attention and some kind of reparations.

Boehner, apparently miffed by the White House emphasis on Rush Limbaugh as the face of the Republicans, wants the spotlight back.

“This," he said after rallying his troops, "is nothing more than a distraction created by the administration to take people’s attention away from the fact that they’re going to raise taxes and grow the size of government.”

If the GOP is aiming for comedy, they will get more slapstick from House Republicans, but Limbaugh is better at delivering punch lines.

Update: In the Washington Post Friday, Boehner pushes the blame-Obama charge with an OpEd piece claiming "in a carefully calculated campaign, operatives and allies of the Obama administration are seeking to divert attention toward radio host Rush Limbaugh, and away from a debate about our alternative solutions on the economy and the irresponsible spending binge they are presiding over." Bring on the long bows.

Those Titillating Republicans

In all the hooha between Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh, the GOP is overlooking the fact that, by long tradition, John McCain is the titular head of their party.

That precept struck me in 1964 during a long conversation with former President Eisenhower. Discussing various issues, he clearly could not bring himself to mention Richard Nixon by name but kept calling him "the titular head of the party" as their 1960 candidate, even though Ike himself was the most recent Republican to occupy the White House.

This year, Republicans are no more enamored of McCain than Ike was of Nixon back then. Their 2008 candidate was non grata at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, where they also pummeled their 21st century Ike, George W. Bush.

The only prominent national politician who seems to recognize McCain's standing is his former opponent, Barack Obama, who had the Arizonan at his side today as he ordered his administration to conduct a review of how contracts are awarded throughout the government.

At a White House meeting last week, McCain had needled the President about the extravagant cost of new helicopters for the Commander-in-Chief and this week is pressuring him to do something about earmarks in the budget.

While most Republicans are howling in the wilderness with Limbaugh and Steele, John McCain is acting every inch as the titular head of the party, the loyal opposition on substantive issues.

President Limbaugh

But enough of reality, let's spend some quality time in Republican Fantasyland, where Barack Obama has a 4 percent approval rating and Rush Limbaugh is making his State of the Union speech.

In a self-proclaimed "first address ever to the nation" (on Fox and C-Span) President Rushbo spent an hour and a half at the Conservative Political Action Conference, railing against "rampant government growth" and "indebtedness that has wealth that has not even been created yet being spent."

He told the faithful: "Ronald Reagan used to speak of a shining city on a hill. Barack Obama portrays America as a soup kitchen in some dark night in a corner of America that's very obscure."

In concluding, President Limbaugh urged his followers: "Don't treat people as children. Respect their intelligence. Realize that there's a way to persuade people. Sometimes the worst way is to get in their face and point a finger. Set up a set of circumstances where the conclusion is obvious. Let them think they came up with the idea themselves."

Looking forward, his aroused constituents voted their choice for President Limbaugh's successor--Mitt Romney by 30 percent, with Bobby Jindal at 14, and Sarah Palin tied with Ron Paul at 13.

Forty-four percent wished they had better choices but in their world there are no term limits. Why not Rush Limbaugh as President-for-Life?

Deck Chairs on the Titanic

The shipboard news today is that the new president is tightening his grip on the helm as Republicans reach for the wheel, but only a few dour souls are up on deck scouring the horizon for icebergs.

Obama rallies Congressional Democrats at their retreat: "We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can't embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face, that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or failing schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees.

"I don't care whether you're driving a hybrid or an SUV-- if you're headed for a cliff, you've got to change direction."

In the first-class lounge, Peggy Noonan sees passengers "braced" for impact while she points out that Obama's "serious and consequential policy mistake is that he put his prestige behind not a new way of breaking through but an old way of staying put. This marked a dreadful misreading of the moment. And now he's digging in. His political mistake, which in retrospect we will see as huge, is that he remoralized the Republicans. He let them back in the game."

Scanning the horizon, Paul Krugman points out that "most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump" and agrees that "the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh."

Krugman and the Times editorial page call for full steam ahead, Republicans want to stop stoking the boilers and the rest of us keep trying to remember how we got shanghaied onto this luxury cruise in the first place.

Obama Says No to the Party of No

At the White House today, the President made it clear that his Inaugural message to Muslims "on the wrong side of history"--that "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist"--applies to Congressional Republicans as well.

Responding to Rep. Eric Cantor's objection to the proposal to increase benefits for low-income workers who don't owe federal income taxes, Obama reminded him of the November election results. "I won," he said. "I trump you on that."

He also suggested to Cantor, John Boehner, Jon Kyl and other leaders of the GOP's negative wing, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Eager as Obama is for bipartisan support for his efforts to prop up the economy and the financial system, these are the first small signs that he may be willing to take some lessons from the Rahm Emanuel school of political hardball.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had a near-death experience in the November balloting, seems to have gotten the memo.

“I realize," he said today, 'that if you told most people Mitch McConnell was down at the National Press Club hoping for bipartisanship, they’d tell you that’s like an insurance agent hoping for an earthquake. Most people don’t exactly view me as the Mr. Rogers of the Senate.”

But, he added, “Everybody believes that government action is necessary. This is coming out of the mouth of someone who doesn’t normally advocate government action as a first resort.”

This could be a reality check for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is announcing on its web site: "Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong."

If the GOP is to avoid becoming the irrelevant Party of No, they will have to get real at their annual retreat in the resort of Hot Springs, Va. next week as they pick a new chairman, while mingling with lobbyists who are paying $25,000 a head for the privilege.

Otherwise, their party may turn out to be as "robust" as the economy.

Half-Baked Alaska

In that alternate reality Up North, Gov. Sarah Palin is back home with her new fame and wardrobe, while Ted Stevens seems to have won reelection to his Senate seat.

The careers of Alaska's two media stars have been intertwined since before Palin emerged and ran for the state house in 2006, and the conjunction will clearly continue.

Senate Republicans, anxious to escape the past and look to the future, would undoubtedly pressure the 84-year-old convicted felon to step aside to let Palin run for the seat in a special election early next year.

That would pose a slight problem for John McCain's running mate, who attained national stature without showing any knowledge whatsoever about substantive issues. As a senator, she would be a politician, to quote her convention speech, "with actual responsibilities" to know what's involved in proposed legislation and cast votes.

But her admirers at the National Review and Weekly Standard would be happy to supply tutelage, and it would be hard for Palin to resist the spotlight and remain frozen in Juneau.

As she told Rush Limbaugh, she is not bothered by the pesky attentions of the mainstream media: "Well, yeah, I guess that message is they do want me to sit down and shut up. But that's not going to happen. I care too much about this great country."

In his concession speech last night, McCain called Palin "an impressive new voice in our party for reform and the principles that have always been our greatest strength" and in Washington she would have much more occasion to wear the designer clothes that Republican contributors bought for her.