American success and a President’s success are not always synonymous.

To the contrary, a Presidential failure can often benefit America, and a Presidential success can often harm America.

This simple truth, however, has been woefully ignored amidst the bizarre White House assault against Rush Limbaugh and other public figures who’ve dared criticize Barack Obama, such as CNBC’s Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer.  In Rush Limbaugh’s case, the hysterical assault from the White House, its mainstream media enablers and sycophant commentators followed his statement that he hopes that Obama fails in implementing his agenda.

As a necessary component of that assault, Obama’s righteous defenders attempted to link his agenda and American well-being as one and the same.

But history illustrates that a Presidential success and American welfare can sometimes be very different things.

Consider, for instance, Woodrow Wilson’s failed attempt to include the United States in the infamous League of Nations, which merely served to disarm democratic nations while sitting idle as Hitler militarized.

As a more recent example, Lyndon Johnson successfully implemented his “Great Society” agenda upon America, and the results have proven largely disastrous.  Forty years later, the Great Society’s primary legacy has been one of bloated federal bureaucracy, deteriorating public schools, a tragic vicious cycle of underclass dependency and spiraling and unsustainable entitlement programs.

Bill Clinton provides another vivid illustration that Presidential success and American success can be antonymous.

He largely failed to implement his preferred agenda, which ultimately translated into success for America.  This reality probably shocks Clinton’s reflexive supporters, who mindlessly assume that America’s 1990s prosperity somehow reflected his successful program.  But quite the opposite is true.

After all, recall Clinton’s agenda as he entered office in January 1993, and his disastrous performance while his party controlled both houses of Congress.

The centerpiece of his agenda was massive governmental healthcare overhaul, derisively known as “Hillarycare” after the First Lady was appointed to lead the secretive effort.  That plan would have bureaucratized the healthcare industry by expanding governmental coercion and dictating a one-size-fits-all system.  Among other dictates, providers would have been told what treatments were permitted, and it even sought to cap the number of physicians who could be specialists at 45% of all doctors.  Clinton’s healthcare plan would also have rationed services, thereby creating the chronic shortages and waiting periods seen in other nations that have socialized medicine.

Fortunately for America, Clinton’s plan went down in flames, because success for Clinton would have been disastrous for the nation.

The first two years of Clinton’s term also witnessed such fiascos as his embarrassing cabinet nomination failures, Whitewater revelations that led to multiple criminal convictions and the Waco disaster.

As a direct consequence of Clinton’s failures, Republicans regained Congressional majorities for the first time in forty years.  And it was only after that 1994 electoral rebuke that America witnessed the successes for which Clinton and his loyalists now claim credit – welfare reform and a balanced budget.

After all, Clinton vetoed welfare reform legislation three times before finally having it shoved down his throat.  And the budget surplus?  That didn’t occur until 1998 – four years after the Contract with America and Republican takeover of Congress.

Simply put, Bill Clinton perfectly illustrates that a President’s failure doesn’t necessarily mean America’s failure.  Because of his early ineptitude, a conservative backlash limited his power and forced him to accept lower spending, sign welfare reform, cut capital gains tax rates and abandon his big-government aspirations.

Today, success for Barack Obama in implementing his agenda will similarly bring terrible harm to America.

That agenda includes the same socialization of the healthcare industry, abolition of the secret ballot in union elections that will cost 600,000 American jobs in the first year alone, imposition of over $1 trillion in new carbon taxes upon American industry, censorship of political speech via the “Fairness Doctrine,” a tripling of the national debt in ten years and submission of American sovereignty to international authorities and the United Nations.

Accordingly, success for Obama in imposing his agenda will bring disastrous results for America.

Love him or hate him, there’s simply no escaping it -- Rush is right.