The Qualifications for President
iRUSH: This is Angela. Nice to have you here.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Hi. I'm calling because I have a problem with the term black president referring to Barack Obama if he's elected. I believe him, if he's elected, I believe he will be the 44th president of the United States, and this terminology, black president, speaks to me, somehow speaks of a separate agenda almost like that C-SPAN February thing they do every month, every February of state of black America and you have the Congressional Black Caucus as, you know, somehow or another a black president will see America through a black lenses versus an American lens, and so I don't like it. It sounds as if there may be some type of different expectation nationally and possibly worldwide of a black president of the United States. I just wanted to express that. And also, if I may, say that your constant repeating of someone being qualified to be president of the United States to me kind of speaks to a professional politician, which goes against the Founding Fathers, their idea that a short-order cook or a basketball coach, even a retired waste management employee is qualified regardless of their race agenda. According to the Constitution, I'm qualified to be president of the United States, and so those are my two issues.
RUSH: Wait a minute, I'm confused about the second point because you said, my constant repeating of —
CALLER: Well, not just you.
RUSH: You mean when we say that Obama is not qualified?
CALLER: Right. Right. Whenever you say that anyone isn't qualified, according to the Constitution, what are the qualifications, 35 and American citizen?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Pretty much, pretty much.
CALLER: I'm qualified.
RUSH: Well, yes. But, give it a go and see what happens.
CALLER: I'm just saying that it just kind of wrongly speaks to a professional politician, and that's one of the reasons why I believe in term limits for everyone, not just —
RUSH: Well, I understand that.
CALLER: — the president.
RUSH: You know, people have many different views and opinions of politics, but one thing about it can't be denied: It is a business. It has its own success track. It has its own requirements for succeeding. There are certain human characteristics and traits that one must have to rise to the top in it. Now, a lot of people get into politics at lower levels, but to rise to the top of that business is no different than rising to the top of any other corporation or any other organized structure. It has its own skill set, it has its own requirements, and the American people have their own demands of what these qualifications ought to be.
CALLER: Well, and that's true in a sense, but constitutionally speaking, if a short-order cook can handle running for president and get elected president, he's qualified to be president.
RUSH: Look, I know exactly what you're saying. Bill Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty at Harvard.
CALLER: Say that again?
RUSH: Bill Buckley once said he would rather be governed by the first 100 names found in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty.
RUSH: You're basically saying the same thing. These people that rise to the peak of professionalism in politics are disingenuous, everything that we associate with politicians. I understand exactly what you're saying. But the real world is, go have your short-order cook try it, go have your short order cook try to raise the money necessary. It's the stuff of fantasies; it's the stuff of books and movies. I mean it is what it is. It would be great if it would happen. Your other point about why do we have to call him black president, hey, look, that is never going to end. I don't care how long this country survives, you take it out to 2075 and the year 3000, if we've survived global warming, I guarantee you that nothing is going to change on this race business because the original sin of this country was slavery, the original sin is never forgotten in any religion, and liberalism is a religion. Liberalism is based on victimology. Liberalism is based on the denial of individual liberty, on the basis of people are incompetent and incapable, thereby setting themselves up in the circumstance where people need them. That's where they derive their power. They are going to forever look at minorities, particularly blacks, as incompetent and incapable and disadvantaged. They're going to look at them through the prism of guilt.
I mean, the orgasms that the Drive-By Media is having over the nomination here of Obama are not surprising at all. It may be a little sickening because it makes you realize we haven't made any progress at all where liberals are concerned and where the media is concerned. If liberals are not willing to progress, then liberalism is going to stay what it is, socialism is going to stay what it is, which it does. You can tell by Obama's speeches, he's simply recycling things that Mario Cuomo said in his keynote speech at the Democrat convention in 1984. There's nothing new in liberalism. There is nothing new, which is another thing that frustrates a lot of you because if there's nothing new, why don't the American people en masse figure it out? Good question. Lots of answers to it. One of the simplest answers is, they may have figured it out, but so many of them now are dependent on somebody from government doing something for them that that takes precedence over their ideological understanding of the failures of this program to help the country at large.
RUSH: By the way, the correct Bill Buckley quote was that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names — not the first 100, by the first 2,000 names — in the Boston phone book, rather than the Harvard faculty. I just wanted to be accurate about that.
Let's talk about this qualifications business for a second, 'cause it's actually very interesting. I want you to go back to that montage (it's cut 23) of Obama and Cuomo. I want you to go get that. We're going to play that again here in just a second. The qualifications for president, there's a difference between the legal and constitutional qualifications and what we believe is qualified, which is a much higher standard. You know, the Framers, the Founders put the qualification in because they were trying to obliterate the notion that only an aristocracy, only the elite could lead, and so they purposely made these definitions very broad. It's one of the many brilliant aspects of the Constitution. But look at the Framers. I mean who did they choose first? George Washington. And he didn't want it. They had to cajole him to take it, but they knew that he had the morality. They knew that he had the character to be the first president. They offered him king. The founders offered George Washington the position of king.
He said no way; that's not what we're about here, guys. And his morality, his leadership style and characteristics made him great. It's amazing how little is taught about George Washington these days. That's another one of these stunning things. You can talk about D-Day, VJ-Day, VE-Day, and all these. So little is taught about George Washington. At his estate in Mount Vernon, they have constructed an entire education center. I myself have made a pittance of a donation to the education center at Mount Vernon, and I'm talking about a whole building, not just the mansion and the stables, but there's a whole new building that chronicles the history of George Washington with wax figures of the man, a dramatic miniature movie that has been made. If you're planning to go to Washington this summer, if you're going to take the kids there for vacation, I'll tell you, because every time I know people are going, they ask, 'What would you do if you were going?' Mount Vernon is a must, especially if your kids are young and have not been taught about George Washington. And if you've forgotten.
The next thing I would visit is the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian. Oh, have you been there, Snerdley? That place is just indescribable. Oh, I know. They have one of the Mercury capsules there; one of John Glenn's, I think. You look at how tiny this thing is and where it went with a human being inside it. The whole Air and Space Museum will blow you away. The whole Archives. Go see the original Declaration, the original Constitution, and there are infinite number of places to go. The Library of Congress will blow you away, too. That is just a phenomenal place. But if you're planning on going to Washington this summer, you have to make a point to go out to Mount Vernon and tour not just his house and his mansion. He was extremely wealthy for his day, and they've got it decorated as it was in his time. You just walk through the hallways. But you go out on that back patio, facing the Potomac, and you realize what happened there. All of the French who came to visit Washington, all of the people planning the revolution and so forth, the things that happened; you can stand right there, where it happened.
They've done a pretty good job of making sure that what you can see from the back of the mansion facing the Potomac across the river has not been changed. So it looks like just what Washington saw other than the difference in the heights of the trees, but they have done their best — they haven't been able to stop it totally but they've done their best — to stop condo projects and so forth going up. It really is worth it.
But this business about qualifications, when you talk about how people determine who they think qualified to be president of the United States, contrast, if you will, conservatives and liberals. I would maintain to you — and I said this on Wednesday, after Obama's big speech in St. Paul, and I'm going to prove it to you here with a little illustration. Liberals can be bought off with a speech. It doesn't matter what the speech says. If the speech has a cadence, if it has great oratory, if it excites the emotions, it doesn't matter the content. We, on the other hand, we are susceptible in some small way to the same (sigh) characteristics.
How many of us wish McCain could give a bigger speech, a better speech? In fact, in The Politico today on their website, there is a long story filled with quotes from anonymous Republicans and anonymous McCain staffers lamenting how bad the speech was delivered on Tuesday night in New Orleans; how good it looked on paper. The words were perfect. And it's interesting, I took a little survey of some of my friends after that speech. All three spoke. Hillary spoke, McCain spoke, and Obama spoke — and it was in this order. McCain went first, then Hillary, then Obama got to hit, you know, clean-up and naturally hit a grand slam. And I had a bunch of people say, 'You know, I thought that McCain speech was great. It was fabulous. Did you hear what he said?' And some of the things he said in that speech were damn good. I even will admit that. Some of them made me cringe. Then others of my friends said, 'Can we get somebody in this party who can speak? Can we find somebody who can put two words together and make it sound like they're actually saying it and not just reading it?' But there were people who liked the content. It didn't matter how it was delivered. It didn't matter to them. I think in general, conservatives are more oriented toward ideas. Liberals are more oriented toward emotions. Let's go back to the sound bite — it's on YouTube — where we have demonstrated that Obama is nothing new here. Nothing revolutionary, nothing unique. Obama is using the same tried-and-true techniques used by Mario 'the Pious' Cuomo in his keynote speech at the Democrat National Convention in 1984. After you listen to this, I want to make a point.
OBAMA: John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy (cheers) — cities in Michigan and Ohio and right here in Minnesota — he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking fo'.
CUOMO: Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, have you visited some more places, maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds.
OBAMA: Maybe if you went to Iowa and let the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and the wealthy.
CUOMO: Maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steelworkers wonder why we subsidize foreign steel.
OBAMA: Maybe — maybe if John McCain went to Pennsylvania and he met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators.
CUOMO: Maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there…
OBAMA: And maybe if John McCain spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul, Minnesota — or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, Louisiana — he'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind.
CUOMO: Maybe, Mr. President, if you ask a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you've said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use. (cheers) Maybe, Mr. President, but I'm afraid not.
RUSH: All right, now, there are some obvious points here. The obvious point is Obama is nothing new. He's nothing unique. He is nothing special, in terms of what he's saying. What he's saying is Democrat Party blueprint! There's nothing new about it, there's nothing special, nothing unique. It's boilerplate. It's right out of their handbook. Change a few locations, change a few social circumstances — a father here, a teacher there, a mother there, Appalachia, Chicago, Lackawanna. It's the same old thing. It's 24 years ago. But, that speech delivered in San Francisco in 1984 as the keynote address at the Democrat National Convention was the one, and the only thing, that told Democrats Cuomo was presidential. We're talking here about presidential qualifications. That speech was the only thing. After that speech, they were saddled with Mondull. They wanted Cuomo, and he fed off that speech for how many years?
Over eight years he fed off that speech as a qualified, legitimate presidential candidate and president — as far as Democrats were concerned. They didn't listen to what he said, and they're not listening to what Obama says. They are dazzled by the fact that they're inspired. Their lives are so meaningless — they're so looking for substance, they all want to make a difference — and Obama can do all that for them, and all they have to do is cheer. So when you start talking about qualifications, it's two different things, being constitutionally and legally qualified versus the high standards that — or the various standards that Americans have in terms of qualifications. So in one sense we could say we've got Mario Cuomo 2 here, Mario Cuomo, Jr., in Barack Obama, with the same appeal. How many times have we pointed out on this very program, this award-winning program, that Obama says nothing better than anybody else has ever said nothing?
Cuomo is a close second. Then you add all the other obvious things. Obama's uniqueness is his race. It's not his character. We can't talk about his character.! We can't talk about Rezko. Can't talk about Wright. Can't talk about Michelle (My Belle). Can't talk about Pfleger. We can't talk about vice presidents now. There's a story. Let me find it. Let me find it very, very quickly here, folks. It won't take long. You will hear me shuffling papers. It won't be long. Da-da-da-da-da. We can't have dead air. The automated stations would go to commercial. That's why I'm singing along here. I'll bet I put it in a different stack. I did. I put it in a different stack. I know right where it is, but I'm not going to take time to find it now because I gotta go to commercial break. But you just add to the long list of things that you can't talk about where Obama is concerned, and they're all things that relate to his character. His race? We're not even really supposed to talk about that, but that's okay because that's what's unique. That's what sets him apart.