Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 05, 2010

Their thoughtless incivility nevertheless undermines our respect for the presidency. If every presidential address can be reduced to a public wrangling over policy, what’s the point of having our president address the electorate? Why not give every congressman and every Supreme Court Justice his five minutes to lead the nation–in front of the cameras, anyhow?

Any way you explain it, the fact remains that their impertinence merely expressed their childish frustration with Obama’s painstaking search for the political truth, and it shows their ugly contempt for the majority of voters who elected him to help find and execute the policies most likely to lead us out of this mess.