Who Needs Petraeus When You Have Crawford?

Craig Crawford, who blogs for the universe at CraigCrawford.com, was on vacation this morning, visiting his folks in Orlando. Though the I-Man was not on the air last week, he certainly was not on vacation, and daydreamed about taking a trip to Florida to see the Crawfords.

“I’d be down there with your mom and dad, we’d all go over to K-Mart,” he said, and reminded the audience of Mrs. Crawford’s aversion to Wal-Mart. She has her reasons.

In fact, it was on another family vacation to Mexico City 33 years ago today that Crawford and his parents learned that Elvis Presley had died. Imus was not on vacation then either, but recalled getting the news while sitting atop a motorcycle in Greenwich, Connecticut, “either thinking about getting drunk, or getting over being drunk.”

Having established this important context, Imus moved on to news of the day, specifically President Obama’s saying last Friday that he supports building a mosque near Ground Zero. The next day, Obama backed away from those comments.

“It’s really hard to keep up with this guy, he’s got a flip-flop political personality,” said Crawford. “I think in his core he is personally a liberal guy, but he’s also a pragmatist, and wants to skew to the center.”

good at morphingNo president reconciled those two parts of himself better than Bill Clinton, in Crawford’s view. “Clinton could morph effortlessly, move back and forth between these positions,” he said. “But Obama, I think it’s all a little bit too obvious.”

As for Imus’s contention that Obama is “the worst president ever,” Crawford replied, “Whoever’s currently president we’re going to think is the worst President, I believe. The job’s just become that hard, and the country’s so polarized.”

Crawford’s advice to any incoming president would be quite simple: “Don’t do a damn thing, get on Air Force One, and enjoy the hell out of it.” Though little would be accomplished, approval ratings would soar. “That’s the trouble: the guy made hard decisions,” he said of Obama, adding, “He’s doing things, he’s getting big legislation through, and his approval rating is just plummeting every time he does something.”

One of Obama’s controversial decisions was declaring the U.S. would begin withdrawal from Afghanistan by next summer, a notion even Commanding General David Petraeus doesn’t seem thrilled with, saying recently that we might be there a lot longer than the President hopes.

Luckily, Crawford, by no means a military expert, had devised a strategy of his own for Afghanistan, which he happily unveiled to Imus today.

“Bribes and Drones,” he said. “Get most of the troops out of there, just bribe the tribal leaders to keep Al-Qaeda out, maybe even the Taliban in some cases, and then watch them with the drones. And if they don’t play ball, just blast the heck out of them.”

To which Imus, between sneezes, replied, “That’s such a good idea, Craig, I can’t stand it.”

-Julie Kanfer