Stupidest Op-Ed Of All Time?
Or:
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen: Obama Shouldn't Run in 2012

This may now be the stupidest op-ed ever written.

I'm rather tired of defending Obama, in part simply because it's getting old, but in part because I have genuine disagreements with the guy. But it seems like every day I run across criticisms of him that are so butt-ass stupid that I simply can't believe my eyes.

In this case, we get Pat Caddell--the anti-Democrat who cable news stations use as the Democrat in their little extreme-conservative-vs.-really-extreme-conservative debates--and Schoen (a Hilarista from 2008) arguing that, hey, the only way for Obama to be a good president is for him to not run again!

You know what I can't wait for? Arguments that the next Democratic presidential candidate can only be a good president by never becoming president at all. Or maybe, so we don't have to go through this every time: the only way for any Democrat to be a good president is to let the Republicans win.

Remember when people like these guys were saying similar things about George W. Bush?

Yeah, me neither.

These fruitcake analyses are beginning to get so convoluted and surreal that I'm genuinely starting to worry that the chattering class may be coming off its hinges. I mean, they're generally not the sharpest tools in the shed as it is...but they seem to be taking their nonsense to a new level.

Here's the thing. Obama is a good President; potentially the best, or one of the best, of my lifetime...a lifetime in which, admittedly, his only real competition is Bill Clinton. Obama--and here I know I sound like a broken record--inherited a disaster that was mostly a consequence of Republican policies, including the almost unimaginable disaster of the entirely irrational and unjustified Iraq war, the quagmire of Afghanistan that was exacerbated by Iraq, and the worst economy since the Great Depression. His only real crime is that he has failed to fix it all...in about a year and a half. Here's a goddamn news flash: nobody could have fixed this mess in a year and a half. Here's another news flash: the GOP has tried to thwart almost every effort to fix the mess that they created. Oh, and: they've made it clear that their first priority is political--to wit, destroying Barack Obama. Ah, but it is, according to the brain trust of Caddell and Schoen, Obama who is being divisive. Their evidence? That ridiculous "enemies" comment. One comment against a massive and open push by the GOP to politicize everything and undermine the President at all costs. I suppose they think that the Allies were being belligerent in WWII...

Now, here's Caddell and Schoen's solution: give in to the GOP. Don't fight them. Let them know that, no matter how terribly they f*ck things up, no matter how deplorable their motives, not matter how dirty their tricks, the Dems will simply whimper and show their throats.

In a world filled with stupid sh*t, this is, far and away, the stupidest thing I have read in a long time. In fact, it goes beyond stupidity...it seems to open up whole new vistas of irrationality in which we respond to problems by doing exactly the opposite of the smart and reasonable thing... If Caddell and Schoen were not such third-rate hacks, I might think that this was some complicated bit of irony.

There are all sorts of intelligent ways to disagree with Obama, all sorts of serious issues that we could be discussing. I'm not sure why a piece of utter nonsense like this is pushed forward in the national debate. If such things got grades--not for being right or wrong, but simply for being reasonable or unreasonable--it's hard to see this piece of crap even managing to swing a gentleman's 'C.'

It's amazing to me that crap like this can get published, let alone in the (admittedly past-its-prime) Washington Post. But, I suppose if a paper is willing to publish George F. Will and Krauthammer, I shouldn't be surprised.
It's probably my fault for allowing myself to read op-ed pages at all these days...much less in the increasingly embarrassing Post. So, in a way, I guess I have no one to blame but myself. I'll certainly be less inclined to make this mistake in the future.