Let me finish tonight with the way President Obama began it.
"Give 'em hell, Barry." That was our cold open tonight - our "headline" in television talk - and it says it all.
President Barack Obama - "Barry" when he was a kid - has sounded the trumpet. You want to blame somebody for the failure of the economy, for the failure of government to move forward - blame the Republicans and the people they represent - the same people who got us into this hell.
"You stay here," he said to the Congress - log jammed by a Republican-Tea Party phalanx in the House and a 60 vote rule in the Senate, "let's get it done." Stop taking so much time off; stop the job-killing game you're playing with the national debt, stop driving up interest rates by sitting on your butts and talking those tired Tea Party talking points.
"Give 'em hell, Barry!
You're talking like a Harry Truman. You're doing what he did six decades ago in Philadelphia in an overheated Convention Hall when he stood there - at 36 percent in the polls - and told the Republican Congress to go back to work.
Without air conditioning, with Democratic delegates sweltering in that middle-of-the-night oven in West Philly, Truman quickly electrified those Democrats by challenging the Republicans to live up to their promises. Now here's Obama doing the same, demanding the party of complaint to join in creating jobs instead of going after unions and other items on their ideological to-do list, like killing Medicare and protecting the wealthy.
I know full well - or I think I do - why the president let loose today. It's because he just got a poll showing most people are ready to hear just what he's saying. The fact is, no matter what you hear on Fox, a strong majority of the country blame the current economic condition of this country on two factors: the Bush administration and Wall Street. Only one in twelve blame Obama. One in twelve!
So here goes. All the noise in this country has been coming from the right. The Republican Party has become the country's complaining corner. They hate government. They hate Washington. They hate Obama being president. They hate getting up in the morning, hate going to bed at night.
Now they're going to get to the feel the heat hitting their own Sacred Cows - Wall Street and the crowd that slipped out of town just as the walls were tumbling down. So get out your crying towels, folks. You're about to feel the heat. The circus parade of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck has had its fun. Defenders of Wall Street and W and the Old Order, beware!