Walk Like an Egyptian

One of the criticisms leveled at deposed Egyptian president Morsi was that he only listened to his supporters, that he did not seem to care about the point that nearly 50% of the people disagreed with his policies.

I feel that I must note that if that was the criteria for whether or not to depose a president, that tanks should have been rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue by 2003. He seemed to care little about things that were not priorities for his base. The entire Terry Schiavo affair, where both Bush and his elder brother (then governor of Florida) used every possible mechanism of government to keep alive a brain-dead white woman, including Bush, who cut short one of his hundreds of trips back to his hobby-ranch in order to return to sign the Schiavo Federal Meddling Bill.

The difference in Egypt may have been that Morsi was changing the constitution. He attempted to place his decisions above judicial review and it was probably likely that he was trying to jerrymander things so that his faction was not defeatable for anything.

Which, of course, if you look at the makeup of our own House of Representatives, is kind of what goes on here.