The Password is: 'Munchkin'

“You Can’t Community-Organize Your Way Out of a Sequester,” Jim Geraghty writes today, with an assist from Red State blogger and RPG fan Moe Lane:

You’re familiar with the notion of the Hedgehog and the Fox, right? “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”?

Hardball producer Michael LaRossa marvels, “Only in America can a President propose a law, get it passed, and then actively campaign against implementing it.” Yes, instead of spending time in Washington, with all of the members of Congress who could pass something to replace the sequester, Obama went to Newport News to hold a campaign-style event shouting about the need to pass something to replace the sequester.

Permit me to spotlight a funny recent essay by Red State contributor Moe Lane, where he examines the skills and philosophy of President Obama through the lens of role-playing games:

To begin with: a munchkin (or power gamer, or mini-maxer, or a bunch of terms that cannot be repeated here) is a type of gamer (roleplaying, computer, roleplaying-computer) who looks for loopholes in the rules – because games have rules, and there isn’t a rule-set in the world that cannot be manipulated by somebody with enough motivation/obsession.  And it turns out that the American Democratic primary system was full of such loopholes, which is why Barack Obama won the nomination in 2008 despite losing almost all the big Democratic primary states (and arguably the popular vote, depending on how you score Michigan).  And it also turns out that the intersection of our electoral system with our rapidly-expanding online culture can produce what computer gamers call “exploits:” which is to say, a glitch in the system that gives someone an unintended benefit (if it just crashes the system, it’s a bug).  Strictly speaking, the system is not designed to elevate a state Senator to the Presidency in five years – for what turned out to be very good reasons – but it can be done.

Read the whole thing.

And then check out Bob Woodward, who notes that Obama is showing “A Kind Of Madness I Haven’t Seen In A Long Time.”

Umm, not for lack of trying by talk radio, Fox News, half of the Blogosphere, and half the voters, who have spent the last five years warning you about it.