High School Harry

I have a high school reunion coming up in a few months, and for various reasons I won't explain here, I've been talking about it on the phone with two former classmates. Maybe that's why high school's on my mind this morning.

I remember 2001, just after W was inaugurated. At that point, Republicans had realized their dreams: They held the White House, had majorities in the House and Senate, and had a reliable 5-4 advantage on the U.S. Supreme Court. At that moment they believed they were The Coolest Kids In School.

You could see it in W's constant smirk and in the smug, gloating attitudes of Tom DeLay and every other Repub who got television camera time. The image clearly communicated was that at every level, Republicans were The People To See and The Ones Setting the Trends.

Time passed. It became obvious that instead of The Cool Kids, the Repubs were a random collection of dicks, dorks, dipshits, neeners, nerds, nimrods, feebs, hoods, and punks. Think about every loser you ever knew in high school, and you'd see five or six just like him (or her) running the government. The Democrats had plenty of dorks and feebs of their own, so it was almost impossible to find any Cool Kids in positions of national power. Americans are always searching for Cool Kids to look up to and pattern themselves after, so an absence of Cool Kids creates a void that must be filled.

When Obama came along last year, he was the epitome of the 21st century version of The Coolest Guy In School, and most people decided he'd make a good student body president.

So here we are today. Republicans are standing in the background again. They're the ones with the plastic pocket protectors and tape holding their glasses together. The ones wearing wing tip shoes with Bermuda shorts. In American Graffiti terms, they're Terry the Toad. For a while though, they were The Cool Kids, the campus bigshots. They blew it, they know it, and it's eating them up.

Kinda like Ray

Paul "Bear" Bryant left Texas A&M to take the head coaching position at the University of Alabama, where he led a team that would be recognized as a national powerhouse from 1958 until he retired after the 1982 season. Bryant's record was 232-46-9 and he is, to this day, considered one of the legends of college football.

Bryant was replaced by one of his former players, Ray Perkins, who lasted four seasons (1983-86) and compiled a decent record (32-15-1). Perkins had one losing season in four, unheard of at Alabama, and was (figuratively) run out of town by disgruntled fans and alumni.

"Bear" Bryant's legendary status is a product of his outstanding competence and professional accomplishments. George W. Bush will become a legendary American president for opposite reasons -- staggering incompetence and a stunning lack of accomplishment. In other words, legendary for all the wrong reasons.

Based on incomplete evidence, Obama is starting to resemble the Ray Perkins character in this analogy, following the legendary G.W. Bush. Maybe even down to the four-seasons tenure.

Bryant established a pattern of success that would be difficult to match, and was the standard against which Perkins was compared and judged. Bush drives a speeding car off the road, leaping clear and allowing Obama to slide behind the wheel just before the car smashes through the guardrail and over the edge. An imperfect analogy, but it's still better to not be the guy following the guy whose success or failure is the stuff of legends. Barry, like Ray, is about to be run out of town by disgruntled fans.