MAUREEN DOWD: Who are you calling a narcissist, Rush?

Published online on Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009

WASHINGTON -- I had a four-hour dinner once with Rush Limbaugh at the "21" Club in Manhattan, back in the days when I was still writing profiles as a "reporterette," to use a Limbaugh coinage.

He was charming, in a shy, awkward, lonely-guy way. Not a man of the people. He arrived in a chauffeured town car and ordered $70-an-ounce Beluga, Porterhouse and 1990 Corton-Charlemagne.

But he was not a Neanderthal. He talked about Chopin's Polonaise No. 6, C.S. Lewis and how much he loved the end of the movie "Love Story."

In those days, he called himself a "harmless little fuzzball." He's a lot less harmless now.

As he and Sarah Palin conduct their auto-da-fe of moderate Republicans -- "Moderates by definition have no principles," he told his radio audience on Monday -- Limbaugh is more than ever the face of his party, as Rahm Emanuel said. He's also the mouth.

Limbaugh is right that Democrats tend to dither too much. They're always wondering if they're doing the right thing, indulging in on-the-one-hand, on-the-other paralysis by analysis.

President Barack Obama will have to step it up on jobs and fixing the deficit if he wants to block conservatives from stoking the anger of Americans who only see a recovery on Wall Street, especially given Republicans' in-roads Tuesday night.

But the tactics of Limbaugh, Palin, Cheney & Fille are more cynical: They spin certainty, ignoring their side's screw-ups, and they exploit patriotism, labeling all critics as traitors.

In an interview on "Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace," Limbaugh accused the president of trying to destroy the economy -- yes, the same economy that W. came within a whisker of ruining.

Asked about Afghanistan, another W. cataclysm that has left Obama agonizing, Limbaugh stated, "I also don't think he cares much about it. He wants to manage this rather than achieve victory."

He told Wallace that "throughout the Iraq war, it was Barack Obama and the Democrat Party which actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military." Actually, rigorously examining the government's conduct of a war started on false pretenses is the best sort of patriotism.

Asked about fellow conservative George Will's contention that the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan, Limbaugh said, "I don't have the benefit of knowledge that George Will has, so I trust the experts, and to me they're the people in the U.S. military."

The founding fathers designated a civilian as commander in chief for a reason. Military brass have told the White House that this is the first time in eight years that they have gotten the attention and resources that they've needed in Afghanistan.

Years ago, when I dubbed Dubya "The Boy Emperor," Limbaugh spewed a stream of personal invective about me that embarrassed even my mother, a Limbaugh fan.

But now Limbaugh calls Obama the "man-child president."

The 48-year-old Obama is skinny and getting skinnier, but there's nothing childish about him. He more or less raised himself, came to terms with his Oedipal demons on his own and radiates a hard-won maturity.

W., on the other hand, was like a kid who knew that Daddy's friends would take care of him; he was always running off to the gym or going biking, leaving the governing to his regents, Cheney and Rummy, or incompetents like Brownie.

At our long-ago dinner, Limbaugh credited his success with being "one-dimensional." "I'm totally concerned with me," he said.

And that was way before he got a contract for $400 million, so we can only imagine how one-dimensional he is now.

But on Sunday, he ripped the president for having "an out-of-this-world ego," for being "very narcissistic," "immature, inexperienced, in over his head." (Isn't immaturity scoring OxyContin from your maid?)

It gives new meaning to pot, kettle and black.