Clueless Dave

Sometime last week, President Bush was in Seattle stumping for Dave Reichert, the Republican congressman. In their travels together, Bush pointed out an angry schoolbus driver as she was flipping them the middle finger. Reichert, eager to show Bush what a good Republican he is, made some phone calls and had the bus driver fired. The woman says that her gesture wasn't political, but rather that she was just frustrated with the traffic the motorcade was causing. Regardless her motive, Reichert relished in his opportunity to punish someone who was against the President and spoke about it at length during his next several rallies.

My thought on the matter was that he was in a very close race with an inexperienced challenger and I was unsure of who to vote for. I was torn. That is, until Reichert showed us how little he supported freedom of speech. I commented on him making my decision easier to Kristin and didn't think much of it beyond that. It's been a hot-button issue for the past week, but with election day tomorrow it was pretty much over with.

Or so I thought, before I actually got to say it to his face. And did. And he didn't even catch the sarcasm.

There were plenty of campaign supporters for the various candidates outside Qwest Field tonight before the Seahawks games, but Reichert was actually there, in the flesh and blood. As we walked towards the entrance his group was standing in front of, I made eye contact and said, "Hey Dave, thanks for showing us how you really feel about freedom of speech last week." I said it with my usual dose of sarcastic vitriol but wasn't necessarily being mean or overly antagonistic. He smiled and thanked me and unless the three or four Mirror Ponds in me were having more of an affect than I thought, I'm pretty sure he uttered something about it being his pleasure.

So let's see, I call him out on stomping all over some woman's freedom of speech (getting her fired no less) and he says it was his pleasure. We all have pleasures, Dave. And mine is going to be voting against sending you back to Washington D.C. tomorrow morning.