The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!: An Open Letter to Anon

An Open Letter to Anon

We received a comment to yesterday's post, An Open Letter to the Prez, from an anonymous conservative, who is apparently a tad worked up over it. We had started out to do a simple rebuttal in the comments for the article, but instead decided that we'd like to expand on his criticisms a little more at length - you know, just to clear the record.
--OP

Dear Anon,

We apparently touched a nerve in our post yesterday. We can understand why, it's painful to see the Leader of the Free World taking so much heat. But hang in there and remember that we're omnipotent and feel your pain.

However, your comments contained several points we'd like to respectfully disagree with. We'd like to clarify those points here:

Our grasp of English is quite clear, thank you very much. If you read the post carefully you will notice there is not a single item cited that is factually untrue. However, there are differences in our interpretation when compared to yours. That doesn't make the statements any less true, it just means we see them in a different light. Since a democracy runs on healthy discourse and honest disagreements, we'd just like to point out we're coming out on the side of democracy here. A position which we hope our President supports, despite what appears (again, this is an opinion) to be the opposite.

We're not sure why you seized on it, but we don't think Bill Clinton's behavior really applies here. We've never felt that a BJ in the Oval Office merited resignation or impeachment, but we did think he should have resigned when he was caught perjuring himself. True, he was inexcusably slow accepting responsibility, but he eventually did - albeit poorly - and was impeached because he had broken the law. We believe that impeachment was a more than sufficient punishment for what he did and would hope for a similar outcome if the current administration finds itself in a similar position. The point of the posting is that the President should take responsibility for the way the war has been conducted. We believe that he has yet to do this and we will happily retract what we said if someone can show us that memo, because we apparently missed it. We don't feel a, "George shouldn't have to acknowledge mistakes if Bill didn't" defense is sufficient. Apparently in the current Oval Office the buck stops everywhere but the President's desk. By the way, John Edwards has the courage to take responsiblity. Why can't George?

We'd also like to point out a conservative position we agree with - get over it! Conservatives offered this advice to Democrats after both of Bush's wins and it's sound advice. We'd also like to point out that it's important for Republicans to "get over it" now too. Bill Clinton isn't in office now and hasn't been for several years. Blaming him instead of cleaning your own house is no more defensible than Democrats moaning about losing elections or Clinton being impeached.

You are quite correct that we deemed his policies a failure and you are also quite right to point out that it might mean we don't understand what "success" is. But the problem here is that we've yet to hear a credible definition of "success" from the man running the show. We'd posit that if he can't explain it, we're a little hard pressed to "understand" it. We're apparently not alone. You are also correct that it is easy to hand out failing grades to someone you want to fail. However, we don't want him to fail, that's the point! We want him to succeed because there is too much at stake to fail. That is precisely why we wrote the letter.

And finally, thanks for the pity, but we don't need it. We feel quite comfortable staking out a position and defending it, just as you apparently do. That's called healthy discourse and it is an essential element of democracy. We hope we can agree on that.

So thanks for dropping in, but next time, please take responsibility for your comments by not submitting them anonymously. Stand up and be proud of them.

We are.

Regards,

The Loyal Opposition