Rooting for failure is un-American, Rush

The most telling aspect of Rush Limbaugh's speech at CPAC was his Super Bowl analogy; as a Steelers fan he said that it was perfectly natural for him to root for Kurt Warner's failure and that rooting against Obama is no different.

The problem with this analogy is that it underscores the painfully obvious truth that rabid partisans see politics as a two-team game where "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Obama is not the quarterback of a football team; he is the leader of a single team that bears the colors of red, white, and blue. The logical extension of this fact is that rooting for Obama's failure equates to rooting for America's failure. But Rush and his acolytes have found various ways to deny this, which leaves us at a bit of an impasse.

The following thought experiment should clear this up: Assume that a charismatic leader offers a plan that would permanently disprove your ideology if it succeeds. Your political religion would thereafter be dead and your most hated political enemies would prove themselves as visionaries. But success of this plan would also be a permanent improvement in the lives of all Americans. Do you root for success or failure?

Many of us would have to swallow hard if the charismatic leader was someone like Mr. Limbaugh. But, unlike football, the "game" of politics has real-world impact on the lives of individual citizens and the health of our nation. Exalting partisan victories over success for the American people is not only an extreme form of selfishness, it's unpatriotic.

Greg Brownfield

Bartlett