Oh, I’m sure a few of them might. And certainly millions of the people who voted them into office do. But the bulk of Republican office-holders don’t hate Barack Obama because he’s black or a secret Muslim or an America-hater or the child of a single mom or Harvard-educated or because his wife makes their kids eat their vegetables.
They don’t hate him because he’s young and good-looking, that he has Bob Dylan’s respect and sings Marvin Gaye better than anyone but Marvin Gaye. They don’t hate him because he knows Facebook and Twitter and can burn them from the podium worse than the kitchen can burn the chicken at the Correspondents’ Dinner. They don’t hate him because he’s cooler than they’ll ever be.
No, they hate him because he does his job. Got an economy you need pulled out of a Great Depression? On that. Care to get tens of millions of people health insurance with a Heritage/Romney plan that doesn’t hurt the insurance industry? Got that. Need to end a couple of horribly-managed wars with at least a modicum of deniability? Can do. Want to open a trade boom with Cuba that could put a rocket in the pockets of red, Southern states? That’s doable.
Republicans in Washington, as opposed to the rabid animals they keep outside the Beltway (who are alarmingly close to gnawing through their leads), hate Barack Hussein Obama because, in every measure, their own or their opponents’, he’s better than they are. He’s better at his job, he’s better at their jobs.
He reminds Americans that, despite everything they and their PR goons have screamed for 30 years, government can work, can be a force for good in the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world. He gives the lie to their core argument for them having their jobs.
My friend Dave, known affectionatly as the world’s oldest roadie, had a saying he’d occasionally bring out when confronted with with an unusually non-functional person:
”You could be replaced by a button that does nothing when you push it!"
Barack Obama is too polite to ever say such a thing, no matter how much someone might deserve it. And, at this point, he doesn’t even have to.
And Republicans hate him for that. For doing his job. And theirs. While singing Marvin Gaye better than anyone except Marvin Gaye.
Update: As emoreJ a Hong Kong points out below, it’s Al Green, not Marvin Gaye, proving that Barack Obama’s cooler than I’ll ever be, too.
But I’ll bet he could nail Marvin, too.