Sore Winners and Gracious Losers

Perusing cable television, I came across Bill Maher on HBO, pausing to see how the Democratic talk show host was coping with success. He’d been so angry during so much of the Bush presidency that I wondered what his countenance would look like while it was beaming with joy. I’m still wondering.

Maher was mad as ever. Flanked by Democratic Party apparatchik Paul Begala, Maher's features were contorted into an ominous grin that was more snarl than smile. He excoriated Republicans—in advance, as it were—for “freaking out if Obama doesn’t sing the National Anthem loud enough or has his suits made in France.” Perhaps that was supposed to be humor. But he certainly wasn't kidding when he warned congressional Republicans that there would be hell to pay—presumably from Maher himself—if they dared to waste Barack Obama’s presidency in an orgy of investigations. This was odd, even for today’s cable television, given that Republicans on Capitol Hill will control exactly nothing when the 111^th Congress convenes in January, and that the threats about turning the next four years into an Inquisition have come from the liberal Democrats—who still fantasize about seeing Dick Cheney or Karl Rove in irons.

And so it went on Real Time with Bill Maher.  It was a seminar in incivility. Sarah Palin may not be "stupid," Begala said, but she is definitely “ignorant” and “mean.” Even this was too accommodating for Begala's host, who insisted that the governor of Alaska was indeed “stupid.” As for her running mate Arizona Senator John McCain, a man who has given virtually every day of his adult life to government service, well, his face was superimposed over the uniform of a Wal-Mart greeter. No elitism there. It made you wonder: When did liberals become so…ill-liberal?

Meanwhile, Maher’s mirror image on the right, one Mr. Rush Limbaugh, was inadvertently filling the radio waves with self-parody as well. “The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen,” he told his faithful listeners. “Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn’t done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street.” I am not making this up. “Hasn’t done anything yet” is not an understatement, it’s patent  nonsense. The man is still two months away from taking the oath of office. C'mon, people. If we can't have a honeymoon, can we at least get a grip?

Conservatives—and liberals, for that matter—could do worse than emulate the man who still lives in the White House. George W. Bush, along with first lady Laura Bush, have exuded only graceful vibes in the aftermath of Obama’s victory. Bush has repeatedly shown that he, too, is caught up in the historic nature of Obama’s ascension—even knowing that much of it was aimed at him. You can find the president's quotes here.

Or they could take their cue from former Bush White House aide Pete Wehner, who advised his fellow conservatives this week: “Republicans should avoid petty, small-minded criticisms of Obama. The public can sense when politicians are trying to manufacture criticism and outrage. That is what Republicans need to guard against: a reflexive tendency to lash out, particularly when the public is weary of such things after a seemingly endless campaign.”

One man who needed no prompting was Fox News anchor Brit Hume. His network is often marginalized by liberals, (both  in and out of the media), but with Hume in the the lead, Fox distinguished itself on Election night. It was Fox News, that supposed bastion of right-wing spin, that first called the state of Ohio for Obama, which means that Fox essentially was the first to proclaim Obama the new president.

Hume, anchoring his last Election Night, was eloquent and classy all evening, particularly at the end. “It is said that money is the mother’s milk of politics—it’s what political campaigns run on—but political campaigns run on something equally as powerful, and that … is emotion,” Hume intoned as his network’s cameras panned the poignant scene in Chicago after Obama spoke to the crowd in Grant Park, and his wife and daughters, along with Joe Biden and his family, joined the nominee on stage. “I love these moments,” Hume said. “Little kids are great at political events. They always threaten to steal the show… Look at those kids. Aren’t they the best?”

Hume continued: “As Senator Obama has said, great challenges and difficulties lie ahead. He mentioned two wars. He mentioned the unprecedented in many ways financial crisis. He mentioned many other things. But those are things for another day…Tonight as you can see, to these people and to the thousands joined there with him in Grant Park in Chicago and many thousands and millions more across the country, tonight is a night of victory and a night of hope, and all things seem possible."

“It really seems possible," Hume concluded, "that this remarkable man will be someone truly and remarkably different, who can lift us out of the partisan differences that divide us, the ideological divisions that keep people apart, who can change the atmosphere in Washington as his predecessor hoped to do but could not, who can somehow find a set of policies that are right for the time. Barack Obama has been elected, an African-American…the 44th president of the United States of America. What a story. What a night!”