Back in the early seventies, when Richard Nixon was president, he had a list of names on a piece of paper. They were members of the media, in large part, and he called this list of names his ‘enemies list.’ That list of names was part of the documentation that the House was preparing to use to impeach Richard Nixon. He had a list of media people he said were his enemies.
We have now gotten to 2009 where the president of the United States, Barack Obama — in a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders in the House of Representatives, in a meeting over his stimulus package — can say to the Republicans, ‘Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. Don’t listen to him. That’s not how things get done in this town,’ and there’s no outrage that a private citizen has been singled out by the president of the United States.
There is tacit agreement in some quarters, curiosity in others.