Ceremonial Pitches

Much has been made of the chorus of boos that greeted President Bush's ceremonial first pitch to Washington Nationals manager Manny Acta as the Nationals opened the baseball season and their new ballpark against the Atlanta Braves last Sunday night. The argument is that those fans were unpatriotic and disrespectful to the office of the presidency and, at the very least, should have refrained from such behavior, regardless of their feelings about Bush. I disagree. With Bush presiding over the most catastrophic foreign policy misadventure in Iraq and the sheer ineptitude in handling the devastation wreaked by Katrina on New Orleans, just to name two colossal failures, the question is, what other reaction could one reasonably expect?