(Update Note: Mr. Dowd has now deleted his original tweets because transparency and accountability  bitches!   However, thanks to the miracle of screenshot technology I have preserved them here for posterity.)

I think the word that ABC's chief political analyst is struggling not to say is "uppity".

uppity (adj.) - self-important; arrogant.

Because here are a couple of excerpts from President George Washington's farewell address:

The Unity of Government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main Pillar in the Edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home; your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that from different causes & from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal & external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly & insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective & individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual & immoveable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our Country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate & particular Interest in Union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means & efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their Peace by foreign Nations; and, what is of inestimable value! they must derive from Union an exemption from those broils and Wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighbouring countries, not tied together by the same government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments & intriegues would stimulate & imbitter. Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown Military establishments, which under any form of Government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty: In this sense it is, that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other...

And here is President Harry Truman's farewell address:

And here is President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address:

And here is President Bill Clinton's farewell address:

And hey, whaddya know!  Here is the farewell address of Matthew Dowd's former employer, President George W. Bush:

You know, it seems like this is just the sort of subject matter that ABC's chief political analyst should be up-to-speed on, especially before shooting off his big, dumb gob in public.

But of course, Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person.

crossposted from Driftglass

UPDATE:

Still trying to give Obama permission to give a speech. Who is arrogant again? - eds.