Photo by sumrow via Flickr

As the debate over U.S. health care reform degenerated into a battle over partisan positioning, Democrats found themselves struggling to inject some kind of legacy into their foundered effort. This meant that — sans Public Option, post-abortion compromise — Senators Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Tom Harkin, and the rest of their aristocratic and anachronistic cronies were, for their respective pre-victory self-congratulations and predictions of economic armeggedon, forced to turn away from the bill for inspiration. Reid found himself destroying baseball history. Senator Christopher Dodd tried to tack his party’s slackened reform onto FDR’s four freedoms. Their colleagues invoked the bible and George Washington.

Sigh.

We here at Unfit value nothing more than a creative cut-and-paste job. Still, such a desperately wide array of historical snipping seems to betray a certain lack of … focus. So, in advance of what will surely be meant as an epoch-defining moment, we offer President Obama’s speech writers the following wholly-borrowed concise message. After these last few weeks of total bullshit, the least our failed leadership can do is grant us all the simple honesty of uniform plagiarism.

The Gospel According to Franklin Delano Washington, or The Full Senate at the Bat

Good evening sports fans.

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency the occasion of my signing the policy on which I have so clearly staked my Presidency, I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels.

[Let me start by saying:] Do not be wise in your own eyes fear the LORD abstract concepts of socialism and shun evil a clear, comprehensive system of health care coverage. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Honor the LORD Aetna with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; Say to him it: ’Long life to you! Good health to you and your household! And good health to all that is yours!

The period for a new election of a citizen, to administer the executive government of the United States, being not [too] far distant, and the time actually arrived [in like 18 months], when your thoughts must be employed designating the person, who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprize you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made sign this hulking abortion of reform, and thus attempt to preserve for myself a chance at the Presidency in 2012.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

[Look duders, like Harkin said, this shit is just a starter health care bill.]

[Besides, this was SO HARD.] I mean, I was like: Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel [of health care reform] shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, the idea that it’s okay to be flexible, if you need to preserve your career, be told for a memorial of her to democracy. [But] [t]hen one of the twelve Senators, called Judas Iscariot Joseph Lieberman, went unto the chief priests Aetna, And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him untoward profits unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.

[So we had a choice. And we decided to call] together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

The Outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine Muddied bill that day:
The score stood four to two Fifty-nine to Forty-one, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney Kennedy died at first, and Barrows Byrd [nearly] did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey the full senate could get but a whack at that -
We’d put up even money, now, with Casey the full Senate at the bat.

But Flynn Lieberman preceded Casey the full Senate, as did also Jimmy Blake Ben Nelson,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey’s the full Senate’s getting to the bat.

[So we compromised. For now. Look, like Harkin said, this shit is just a starter health care bill.]

[L]et me [now] assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. [And for that, you might have to wait like six years. Like Harkin said, this shit is just a starter health care bill.]

The Obama Administration Could Soon Be Seeing 'Trails...

For anyone keeping an eye on the U.S. political scene as it has devolved over the past couple of months, health care would seem to be the only issue on the national agenda. And rightly so: In seeming to stake the success of (at least) his first term on the comprehensive reform of that system, President Obama has focused everyone’s attentions on the outcome of this whole mess. Still, as Roll Call reported on September 8 (tomorrow), “just because health care is all anyone wants to talk about, Democrats aren’t giving up on pushing a number of other controversial measures this fall.” According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), “Key items … [include] delivering on health insurance reform and clean energy, providing jobs by improving our infrastructure, and reining in the behavior on Wall Street that contributed to the economic downturn. We also intend to pass legislation that makes college more affordable and invest in critical domestic priorities.”

(Good. Luck.)

With current political efforts so focused on this health care thing, there are, really, only two possible outcomes for the fall session: 1) Obama gets his health care legislation passed — undiluted — and declares himself a victory. In this scenario he spends his political capital wisely and earns his party a nice return, thereby rendering himself able to complete the balance of his Presidential agenda. 2) Obama fails — by which we mean that either he can’t force through a health care bill in any form, or he passes something that reads to the lefter side of his party like an intolerable compromise — in the health care department and is forced to declare political bankruptcy. In this scenario, we can look forward to two or three years of Presidential timidity, at least in terms of his domestic agenda.

That is, unless of course, the President can deflect a healthy dose of negative bipartisan attention elsewhere (preferably toward the far-left, who will, in the wake of such a disaster, do their best to undo the moderate coalition that will be blamed for sinking health care reform). Which is to say that, in the event of a health care failure, he’ll need to figure out a way to send enough non-Obamian bad vibes through the U.S. political sphere that he might just be able to resurrect his first term. For that, Obama can rely on Sen. Reid, with his seemingly benign batch of proposals, or he can go all out, to the far-left end of his party, and dispatch Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) to re-introduce HR-2997, the Space Preservation Act of 2001, and have him start screaming and yelling about Congress wasting time.

Unlike subsequent Space Preservation Acts, the 2001 version includes a clause (Sec. 7, para. 2b) that calls for “a permanent ban on space-based weapons of the United States…includ[ing] exotic weapons systems such as

• (i) electronic, psychotronic, or information weapons
• (ii) chemtrails;
• (iii) high altitude ultra low frequency weapons systems;
• (iv) plasma, electromagnetic, sonic, or ultrasonic weapons;
• (v) laser weapons systems;
• (vi) strategic, theater, tactical, or extraterrestrial weapons; and
• (vii) chemical, biological, environmental, climate, or tectonic weapons.”

As fun as the rest of all of that is — subparagraph (i) in particular — it’s that bit about chemtrails that might just save President Obama. If you’re unfamiliar with these suckers, here’s a primer. For those unwilling to click (or, in the case — as the author of the Web site implies — that link is disappeared by the Feds), the operative stuff: “What some people had dismissed as mere ‘jet plane exhaust‘ … are dismayed to realize that chemtrails are indeed the toxin-laden aerosols that have been described here and at other web sites since 1998 and they are not being sprayed for any benign or national security reason as the disinformation peddlers would have you believe.

“Nothing brings home the comprehension of the New World Order depopulation agenda than the realization that you and your family are also on the ‘useless eaters’ (Henry Kissinger) elimination list.”

That New World Order depopulation agenda? The ‘useless eaters’? The chemtrails? Those’d be the purview of the conspiracy junkies who think that there’s a secret organization running the world making eugenically informed decisions about who should get to live what sort of life, and carrying out their agenda via chemicals hidden in the contrails of jet airplanes. In other words: just the sort of folks who need a good reigning in from the Obama administration.

Also: Nothing makes a failure look like less of a failure than the reinforcement of the idea that someone — importantly, someone from the wing of the party that will be on the attack — is more unfit for office than you are. And Kucinich and his seeming belief in the contrail conspiracy makes for a great target.

Near as we can tell, if Obama wants to get his Presidency out of the weeds, it’s the Space Preservation Act or martial law. Unless, of course, he wants to bust some heads and get that health care thing through.