by Carter Wrenn, Taking About Politics, November 4, 2013.
Any Southerner worth his salt, at some point, has come face to face with William Faulkner’s story “The Bear” – about a mammoth, faster than a locomotive bear who roams and rules the last 100 square miles of pure wilderness in Mississippi where the final vestiges of ancient virtues like endurance and sacrifice have not yet been corrupted by the tentacles of civilization.
Each fall, every year, the same troop of hunters – a farmer, an aging Confederate General, a banker, a half-breed Indian, an incorrigible redneck and a boy – climb into wagons and roll into the wilderness for a rendezvous with the legendary bear none of them actually expect (and may not even want) to kill.
In those days bear hunting required hunting dogs, but no dog in his right mind wanted to go anywhere near that mammoth bear – until, at last, one of the hunters found a fyce with more gumption and courage than good sense.
The first time the little dog laid eyes on the bear he lowered his head and charged and the bear, more surprised than alarmed, stopped and turned at bay rising onto his hind legs.
The fyce, a paw slap away from doom, was saved.
Then, as the giant bear lumbered away, one hunter glanced at the man next to him, nodded down at the still yipping fyce, and grunted, We ain’t got the dawg yet – h’it aint big enough.
Up in Washington, President Obama’s the territorial equivalent of that old bear. Two Presidential Elections ago no one thought he’d whip Hillary – who was a Democratic legend in her own right.
Then, though no one said it much, a fair amount of folks figured the odds were pretty long against a black man getting elected President – but Obama whipped a war hero and landed in the White House.
When 2012 rolled around, just about every Republican guru and savant on TV was prophesying Obama, with his huge disapproval rating, was doomed. Instead Obama whipped Mitt Romney and since then he’s whipped John Boehner and Mitch McConnell in just about every fight with Congress without hardly breaking a sweat.
Of course just about everyone has an explanation for why Obama’s whipped every Republican in sight. It’s demographics. Urbanization. Culture. Technology. But in the end, let’s give Obama credit – Republicans failure may be as simple as ‘we ain’t found a dawg big
