Every politician has his guilty pleasure.
There is just so much artificiality in politics, so much soul-deadening pantomiming of genuine emotion, that simply to remain sane, every politician has to have a vice. Some activity that, deep down in his soul, whether it's right or it's wrong, he truly enjoys, and isn't faking.
Maybe one guy just gets off on stroking the plush upholstery of his Senate seat.
Another guy clucks his tongue over his suddenly winning ways on Wall Street, what with all the inside info he's privy to.
Another public servant so admires the way his semi-hard pee-pee looks pressing against his briefs that he can't help taking pictures of it and tweeting it to the world.
Another just loves the easy access he has to youthful Congressional pages.
And then of course there was Monica.
Bill Clinton may have had to kiss a lot of distasteful ass and laugh at a lot of unfunny jokes and pretend to adore his wife in public and feel the pain of people he didn't even know - but there was one thing he absolutely loved about being president. And that was the bj's.
You couldn't tell whether he'd ever inhaled; you might never know what he really thought about ending welfare as we know it; or whether he knew getting rid of Glass-Steagall would lead to a financial meltdown; but God dang it, one thing we knew about the man was that he liked to get his knob polished.
Now, a lot of people say that Barack Obama, as the first black president, doesn't have the leeway to indulge in a vice. He's had to watch his P's and Q's every second of every day, knowing that one slip-up would mean the end of his presidency.
But Obama's found a way to get his jollies as president, as every president must, because life is just too deadly dull if he doesn't. Being president of the United States has got to be one of the greatest adrenaline rushes in the history of the human race, and even a cat as cool as Barack Obama has got to let out a whoop every now and then.
And he does it by beating the pants off the privileged, arrogant, entitled and lazy political opponent the Republican Party has offered up as a candidate.
Even before Romney was the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Obama was having fun with him. At the correspondents dinner in 2011, he said he was happy to "be in the wonderful Hilton International Ballroom - or what Mitt Romney would call a little fixer-upper."
You could tell Obama wanted Romney all through the primaries. No matter whether it was Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or even the Godfather Pizza Guy who might temporarily be the so-called "frontrunner," Obama always acted as if he knew that Romney would be his ultimate opponent. It was like he was willing it to be so.
There is basically one minority group it's still politically correct to make fun of - and that's rich white guys. And Obama is playing it to the hilt. How life-affirming it must be to wake up each morning with relish, tingling with anticipation at what new punch Willard has left himself wide open to this time, whether it be his wife's dressage horse or some new tax shelter in the Cayman Islands.
All his life, Obama's had to put up with white sons of privilege underestimating him, mocking his name, questioning his background, accusing him of being an affirmative action hire, questioning his patriotism, questioning his identity as an American. And all he's ever done is smile, and brush off his lapels, and take the high road. So what a pleasure it must be to have a punching bag like Romney, a guy so vain and entitled that when he was in prep school, he helped hold a gay kid down, cut off his hair - and then claim he had no memory of the incident! Funny how bullies have such poor memories of their actions and their victims have such vivid ones.
Anyway, I'm glad Obama's enjoying the ass-whupping he's putting on Romney. It gives the campaign a flavor that the John Kerry and Al Gore and Michael Dukakis campaigns could never muster, the visceral pleasure of going after your opponent and beating the living shit out of him. The Republicans always seemed to be the ones that truly enjoyed the smell of their opponents blood. This time it's Cool Cat Obama toying with the mouse in his claws, enjoying every sweet moment of it - and the sweetest part is, it's all perfectly legal, perfectly justified, all perfectly legitimate, with no nasty unintended consequences, like other politicians' vices.
I hope at the end of every long day on the campaign trail, Obama takes a moment for himself, sneaks away from Michelle and Axelrod and Plouffe and his Secret Service detail... lights up a forbidden smoke..and savors the absolute smackdown he's applying to the clueless Rich Kid who thought he could climb into the ring with a true champion.
'Cause he deserves that cigarette.