Lupica: Rahm Emanuel is the Smartest Guy Around or Something

Looks like Mikey Lilliputian is falling out of love with Barack Obama and is now pining for the oily Rahm Emanuel. Naturally, this "opinion" piece comes with the requisite cheap shots at Sarah Palin.

This time it was Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, making the speech that he hopes is the start of everything for him. This time it was Emanuel, a White House insider turned into a political outsider this fast, standing in the Coonley Elementary School, talking about a vision for the future for his city and really talking about himself.

"The question in this election is who has the experience, imagination and strength to see a better future," he said.

He is the tough guy from the Obama administration who now wants to be mayor of Chicago, then see where he can go from there. But you know he sees Chicago as just the beginning of something grander for him. This is American politics now, in the age of Barack Obama. The Obama who came from Chicago and really nowhere to become President.

They all think they can make it happen fast, as fast as the country turned around on Obama. The smart guys, and there is nobody around smarter than Emanuel, understand this has become Attention-Deficit America now, our society flattening out faster than it ever has in history, voters unable to distinguish between message and messengers in the age of Twitter and the Internet and the demagoguery, left and right, of cable TV.

This is how guys like Lupica rationalize the daily hatefests on MSNBC, by weakly claiming folks on the left and right are demagogues. He can't offer any examples, of course. Then he goes on to call Palin the "drum majorette for the Tea Party" and says she has all the substance of "substance of a Hallmark card" and then makes a fat joke about Chris Christie.

But Rahm Emanuel, he's the smartest guy out there.