John LeBoutillier Was Mean to Imus. Boo-Hoo.

It makes sense that when faced with an astute political guest like former Congressman John LeBoutillier, Imus would ask a question about the erection coming up in November. It makes even more sense that the scholarly LeBoutillier would be so focused on providing an intelligent answer that he didn’t notice Imus’s intentional gaffe.

“It’s huge,” said LeBoutillier, presumably about the election, which is just three months away. “It’s obvious that the Republicans have a big head of steam, the Democrats are in terrible trouble.”

The proof, he insisted, is in the pudding for President Obama. “The polling is down, the economy is down, we may be heading back down toward another recession,” LeBoutillier observed. “What good things do Obama and the Democrats have to brag about after a year-and-a-half in power?”

Imus hoped the question was meant to be rhetorical (it was), but LeBoutillier said he wouldn’t be able to answer it anyway, because nobody could. Not because Imus didn’t go to Harvard, like his guest.

“I was killing Viet Cong in the jungles of Vietnam so you could have a nice education,” he inaccurately told LeBoutillier, who became so distracted by Imus’s nonsense that he lost his train of thought.

It’s always safe to assume he had been railing on Obama, and so LeBoutillier continued down that road. “Everything they’ve done is at odds with the majority of the American people,” he said, ticking off the corporate bailouts, health care reform, and Obama’s position on Arizona’s immigration law as examples.

“He has deliberately chosen to be on the minority side of these hot-button issues,” LeBoutillier said, adding, “If you’re elected by the majority of people, as he was, and then you quickly flip around and side with the minority of people over all these issues, at some point you’re going to become a minority President.”

He predicted carnage in the House later this year, but isn’t sure the Republicans will gain control. Either way, Obama has to “adjust himself to the reality of things,” said LeBoutillier, who then provided some reality of his own on the BP disaster.

Having recently met with a South Korean business and science expert, LeBoutillier reported that when all is said and done, the environmental and economic damage from the spill will be “the equivalent of 14 Chernobyls.”

He added, “The damage to the land, the wetlands, the beaches, the sea bed—that’s going to last decades. The damage from the dispersants that have been used will be the equivalent of Agent Orange.”

LeBoutillier maintains that Obama should have set up camp on a destroyer in the Gulf of Mexico, “like a young Theodore Roosevelt would,” and brought down the Navy and the Marine Reserves to monitor BP’s clean up efforts.

“Even bugle players!” he said, referring to Imus’s designation in the Marine Corps. Thankfully, time was up, and LeBoutillier could insult the I-Man no more.

-Julie Kanfer