Opinion: President XLIV allows a few Cardinal fans in for Super Bowl XLIII

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Remember last winter New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson had a Super Bowl party at his home and ex-President Bill Clinton stopped by to ensure his former Cabinet member was gonna endorse Hillary for the party’s presidential nomination?

And Clinton, who obviously looks very excited by the XLIInd game in this photo, left the shindig thinking the bearded Bill was onboard. Hardly anyone remembers who won that Super Bowl, except it wasn’t New Mexico. So the NFL decided to have an other one this year.

That party didn’t turn out that well. The two Bill buddies turned a bit bitter. And James ‘Richardson is a Judas’ Carville wasn’t all that happy either.

This year the new president isn’t the other Bill’s wife. It’s Barack Obama.

As The Ticket reported the other day, the Great Change Agent is throwing caution to the wind, abandoning traditional nonpartisan political protocol about the best team winning and selling his allegiance to a team whose owner supported Obama’s candidacy.

Wasn’t there some Illinois governor recently ousted for allegedly offering to sell his office’s services?

The prez needs to be careful here. Sure, Obama says he’s fundamentally a Bears fan. But we’re talking football. NFL football, which is more important than anything in this country except high school football, oh, and college football. The Super Bowl is a cultural icon. True, American car makers can’t afford to advertise on the show this year.

But NBC has promised to have Obama for a game-day interview which, of course, is the main reason so many millions of Americans will be watching. Sure do hope Mr. Moving Forward follows form and trots out some brand-new, horribly depressing economic figures to flatten the escapist kickoff.

Listen for him to go on a bit more about the Cardinals and Kurt Warner being a great underdog story and how Kurt is close to Obama in age; not really, but it sounds nice. The Dems know it’ll be years before they win Arizona, so throw the Cards under the Jeremiah Wright honorary bus and stick with Pennsylvania’s Terrible Towels.

(Also, need we point out, Arizona is the home state of a certain Republican who had some negative things to say about Obama during the recent general election campaign. He declined the invitation. To quote Sean Connery, ‘That’s the Chicago way!’)

But the real measure of the White House sensitivity is that after the boss publicly proclaimed his favorite team and Vice President Joe Biden enthused ‘Me too,’ Obama’s team made an announcement: The XLIIIIth president will have his own White House party to watch Super Bowl XLIII. And, as an ardent advocate of bipartisanship, Obama is even inviting a few Cardinals fans.

We’ve got the official invitation list below. If you’re not on it, order your own pizza at home.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Sens Bob Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Artur Davis (D-AL), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC), Patrick Murphy (D-PA), Fred Upton (R-MI).