Joe Scarborough wants Walter Sobchak for president

Joe Scarborough's dream candidate says, "You want a toe?"

It truly blows my mind that, after the debacle that was the 2004 elections and the widespread acknowledgment that the media f**ked up an entire election by going all lizard brain on John Kerry, that a "serious" pundit with his own MSNBC show would say something this alpha-moronic:

You know, Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it's a man, to be a real man. They -- 1984, I remember Ronald Reagan goes to South Boston. He holds up that beer mug --

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: -- in that South Boston pub, and everybody's like, "He's a real man," and I guess Barack Obama's trying to do the same thing, too.

Yeah, Joe, 'cuz you're a real man, what with your bottled water and high-thread-count black sweater. Real salt of the earth.

What do you think are the chances Joe Scarborough can bowl a 200?

Seriously, though, we can take it as a given that, whenever a pundit says "Americans want...," what they actually mean is "I think I'm an average American, and I want..." Joe, then, is telling us he actually believes it when Republicans do their "Man Show" act. Joe Scarborough saw wealthy professional actor Ronald Reagan have a beer in Southie and actually believed that he was a working class beer swillin' man's man at heart, who could have been on Bass Masters or had his own carpentry show had he not opted for politics instead. What do you think are the chances he feels a little safer in his bed when he sees draft-dodging New England aristocrat George W. Bush in jeans and a cowboy hat clearing brush on his livestock-free ranch? Whether a president can bowl a 200 matters to this douchebag, and he thinks it should matter to you, too.

This is a moment where it's useful to remember that the star of "Morning Wood Joe" was a Republican congressman. Tom Tomorrow once wrote a fine cartoon about the kind of candidate Republicans really want. Then again, I'm hearing that this story bubbled up in other parts of the media cesspool as well.