Lèse-majesté ?

In the last few days  leftist supporters of President Obama have been extremely agitated over two things they see as insults to their favorite – Rudy Guiliani’s questioning whether Obama loves the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu’s giving a speech to the congress challenging Obama’s plan for an agreement with Iran on its nuclear weapons program. 

Yet Guiliani’s comments are both reasonable and reflective of what millions of Americans have already decided on their own.  Given the man’s self proclaimed Marxist background, his rather obvious festering racial resentment, his penchant for dwelling morbidly and joyously on the nation’s sins (past and present, real and imagined), and his apparent utter dismissal of the notion there might be something exceptional about a nation founded on principles of individual rights and limited government and without the lingering burdens of a feudal or despotic past, it is quite rational to conclude he probably does not care much for this place.

Neither was it inappropriate for Boehner to invite Netanyahu to  speak or for Netanyahu to accept the offer and say what he thinks about the threat from Iran. I don’t know if the danger is as great as he claims, but there is clearly some danger.  He may have an incentive to overstate it, but Obama and company seem so eager to reach an agreement that it is sensible to assume they are likely to understate it, particularly given Obama’s rather obvious affection for all things Islamic and his almost as obvious distaste for Israel.  There is nothing unreasonable about having suspicions as to whether people such as Obama, Biden, and Kerry either understand the interests of the United States or are willing to put  those interests first.  Netanyahu has done all of us a favor by stimulating controversy and demands for evidence any agreement will be a good one.

Still  the leftists are infuriated, some even besides themselves, over this.  There are obvious conjectures as to why. Insecurity over whether Obama really does like the United States would account for outrage over someone daring to ask the question. Religious-like devotion would account for anger among the faithful  over anyone seriously questioning their leader’s  actions or pronouncements.

Some are even falling back on the old cliché that people must always respect the office of the presidency. Leaving aside the way these same leftists treated the hapless George W. Bush, there is no imperative to respect the office. It is just another political position which can be filled by good people or bad ones.  One should respect Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt in the awful summer and fall of 1940, Ronald Reagan during the cold war, and  others who did good things at various times. However there is no reason to respect the office as such, and certainly no reason to respect people such as Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy  Carter, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama because the held or hold it. It is a truism of management that a good boss sometimes can make a difference, but a bad one always can. That holds  true for presidents as well.