Just Because He Went To Harvard Doesn't Mean He's Any Better Than Imus

Former Congressman John LeBoutillier had an interesting assortment of songs today, from Linda Ronstadt to The Beach Boys. One of his songs, The Doobie Brothers' What A Fool Believes somewhat appropriately stirs up memories of when LeBoutillier met President Richard Nixon in California.

"It was one of the big moments of my life up to that time, to meet President Nixon in his office," said LeBoutillier, then a business student at Harvard. "I had an hour with him and Ray Price, his speechwriter. It began a good relationship I had with President Nixon all through the 80s and into the 90s."

Imus agreed Nixon might have been one of the best President's ever, save for the fact that he was crazy. A President we're hoping is slightly less insane accepted the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, and LeBoutilier called the whole thing "unfortunate."

"I can't give the guy any grief for it, except that it's absurd," he said of Obama getting the prize and having done almost nothing to deserve it. His acceptance speech, however, was more believable than the one he gave last week announcing he'd send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, LeBoutillier added.

"He's struggling to say, 'I'm a man of peace while I'm waging a war,'" he said.

LeBoutillier believes Obama should tell the Afghan and Pakistani people, "Bring us Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, dead or alive, I don't care. Bring them to us, and we will pack up and be gone in 60 days."

The President's message on the war in Afghanistan has been totally misconstrued, neglecting to even mention Bin Laden. It's all the more indication, at least to Imus, that Obama has little idea what he's doing.

"He's been learning this year how to be an executive, and I'm not sure he's really learned that much because he's made a lot of mistakes," said LeBoutillier, who then asked "Bigfoot" to show on television a chart indicating Obama's slipping approval numbers.

"You can't go to Harvard College and Harvard Business School and then refer to the executive producer of the program like I do," Imus told his guest.

Obama's numbers have suffered because he has "lurched all over the place," said LeBoutililer, who offered his rationale for why Obama seems, at times, aloof.

"His mother was an anthropologist," said LeBoutillier. "Obama is a big brain, he's well-educated in an intellectual sense but his comment...that people 'cling to their guns and their religion' was almost like an anthropologist studying a strange species."

Good politicians, he added, can feel what people care about. "I'm not sure he really does," said LeBoutillier.

-Julie Kanfer