Get set for a march on Tulsa

For two hot days I wandered the city streets near New York University with a notebook in my shorts pocket and a grimace on my face.


Political extremists get under my skin.


On assignment for the New York Post, I had been sent to help cover the 2004 Republican National Convention protests. The bulk of my day was spent baby-sitting the headquarters of an activist group whose leader had been arrested sometime in the 1970s, I think, for a firebombing. Needless to say, nothing newsworthy ever happened with that bearded guy or his band of young followers. I was forced to fill the time people-watching.


Sparing the gruesome details, many of the protesters looked very bizarre. But that was fine with me, for the most part. It was the stuff they were saying and doing that turned me off. Especially off-putting were the picket signs being handed out likening George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler. (People were lining up for those signs.) There was also a group pushing pamphlets that explained exactly how and why George W. Bush had planned 9/11.


To these people out protesting, it seemed, all the ills of the world were the fault of the Republican president. After I had engaged some of them in conversation, it became clear that folks like Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, even Osama Bin Laden, all had good intentions. Their sins were pardoned in consideration of their circumstances. Bush on the other hand was just pure evil, like Hitler, the only other guy in history who doesn’t get a pass. This was nuts.


Needless to say, Bush was reelected and went on to a disastrous second term, during which his greatest accomplishment with respect to the economic health of the U.S. may have been his failed effort to privatize Social Security.


Thanks to a wrecked country, the American people began to return the Democrats to power, culminating with Barack Obama’s election in 2008. The U.S., it seemed, was undergoing a much-needed political correction after a decade dominated by Republican rule. Having been just a teenager through most of Bill Clinton’s spotty tenure, I was curious about how the now-minority GOP and its television pundits and radio show hosts would behave during the Obama administration.


It soon became evident that they were no better than those naked, painted, purple-haired conspiracy theorists (I’m still trying my best to spare you the details) who were running around near NYU, calling for Bush’s head.


Now all the ills of the country, no matter how long in the making, are Obama’s fault, according to GOP lawmakers and their band of followers.


It’s the same drumbeat every day on Conservative radio, where hosts have been telling of Obama’s plans to turn the U.S. into a socialist state, while laughably trying to distance themselves from George W. Bush after eight years of unabashed support.


And the name-calling has been just as bad.


Indeed, it was only July of last year, less than six months into Obama’s term, when protesters took to the streets of the North Fork, comparing Obama to Hitler in the context of proposed health-care legislation.


Hitler again? How original.


To be fair, the Democratic Party will get what it deserves in response to Obama’s and Nancy Pelosi’s politically tone-deaf pursuit of a cap-and-tax program in the midst of a 10 percent unemployment rate. Obama’s seamy czar appointees and bungling of the Christmas Day bomber interrogation (Miranda rights? Seriously?) have also chipped away at his political capital.


But if America’s awful health insurance system goes unchanged, it will likely be the fault of GOP lawmakers who, despite what the spinmeisters say, would have refused to participate, because a failed health-care overhaul may just spell a failed presidency for Obama.


So is that the future of American democracy, politicians outside the White House working furiously to foil every effort of the sitting president, the country be damned, with the help of their minions? No matter who the next president is, he or she shouldn’t expect much bipartisan support on anything from now on; you know what they say about payback.


It would appear the country is in need of some extreme centrists to end this potentially disastrous cycle of torpedoing executives. The cheerleaders on the far left and the far right are mobilized. We need some folks from the far-center to rise up.


First, they’ll need some picket signs.


I would suggest slapping photos of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet (a medium-diabolical head of state) on Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin for a march somewhere between California and Washington D.C.


Michael White is the editor of the Riverhead News-Review. He can be reached at mwhite@timesreview.com or (631) 298-3200 Ext. 152.