Not bad for a kid from Cape Girardeau.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III didn’t do so bad passing up the family predilection for law school.

Not bad at all.

The word leaked yesterday that Rush Limbaugh, one-half of the defining force in A.M. talk radio, has signed a contract for $400 million. He’ll be on the air for another eight years, and he’ll be rolling in dough for every second of it.

The richest man in broadcasting has made so much money he’s going to have to change his name to Oprah.

And I couldn’t be happier.

He deserves it.

By which I mean, for most of 20 years, Rush has been my radio friend. He’s the guy who’s with me in the truck on the drive home after work. He’s the guy whose passion and intelligence have entertained me and inspired me, and whose example prompted me to make a career change.

I’m a radio talk-show host because of Rush Limbaugh. His example – being a conservative, white, Christian guy in the media – showed me a way to make a living that had more of a future than the politically correct newspaper-columnist job I had before. His power – using a medium that reached people directly without a filter – showed me a way to connect with people in a way that would motivate them more than I could in the newspaper.

And Rush Limbaugh brought prosperity to a radio genre – A.M. talk – that allowed stations to afford local hosts like me.

There’s not a day that passes that I don’t realize that if there was no Rush Limbaugh, there would be no Bob Lonsberry – at least in terms of radio.

I’ve only met him once, and that was a quick, shy handshake, but I feel like he’s one of my oldest friends. And I think there are millions of others who feel the same way.

And we all love the fact that he daily gives the finger to the establishment that looks down on him and on us. Rush Limbaugh is the shadow president of the United States, elected each day by people who tune their radios to him.

For millions of Americans, Rush Limbaugh is their representative and their champion. The silent majority has found its voice, and it his him. Thoughts and ideas – the contraband of politically correct mind control – are his stock and trade. He says things other people think, but which society will not allow them to utter.

Talk radio, as defined by Rush Limbaugh, isn’t a bullhorn, it is a mirror – held up to reflect the America that truly is America. The most frustrating thing about Rush Limbaugh, in the view of the powerful Left, is that he is popular. He is not the exception, he is the norm. He is the best representation of work-a-day America in the national media.

They’d like to take him down, believing if he is gone the sheep will scatter. But they don’t realize that Rush doesn’t lead, he follows. He follows the traditions of our constitutional Republic and he follows the pulse of the American mainstream.

And if he got $400 million out of the big radio company, more power to him.

Of course, it’s important to note that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and others of that rank are the tiniest tip of the radio pay scale. The rest of us aren’t flying in private jets. In fact, with this new contract and signing bonus, I would – at my current wage – have to work 4,000 years to make what Rush will in the next eight years.

And I work two jobs. He’s on three hours a day; I’m on seven.

And the money to pay Rush and the others at the top will come out of the hide of those of us at the bottom. There are only so many dollars in radio and, in some regards, it is a shrinking industry sensitive to flutters in the economy.

And then there’s the Fairness Doctrine – the other half of the defining force in A.M. radio. Ronald Reagan threw out the evil mandate, which is nothing more than an oppressive guarantee that the First Amendment protection of free speech and free press won’t ever apply to broadcasting. When the Fairness Doctrine went away, and real opinion was allowed, Rush Limbaugh exploded.

But the fact that conservative views have flourished and liberal views have been rejected has turned Democrat politicians against talk radio. Democrats in the House of Representatives have legislation ready that would bring back the doctrine and bring an end to opinion radio. Nancy Pelosi is in favor of it, and so – it seems – is Barack Obama.

So Rush Limbaugh is a $400 million gamble that the Fairness Doctrine will stay dead or that people will be happy with Rush talking about his cats and his golf for three hours a day.

But here’s my prediction: This is going to work out. Betting on Rush Limbaugh has proven successful every time it’s been tried.

And I’m glad.

Because my concerns are small and specific. I want Rush to keep coming out of the radio in my truck as I drive home from work. When the politicians are screwing us over and I need to get pumped up about what this country really stands for, I want him to be there.

And if it cost a radio company $400 million to keep him there for eight more years, I’m grateful somebody’s going to pony up the dollars.

Rush is my friend. Me and a few million others. And if my friend hit it big, I say, "Good for him."

Wesley Clark isn’t worthy to wipe up the blood in John McCain’s cell.

And yet this ambitious little Obama lackey has so whored himself to a shot at the vice presidency that he’s willing to mock another warrior’s service.

And not just any warrior.

But a genuine, bona fide American hero.

You may not want to vote for John McCain, but you can’t disrespect him. At least not his military service. That’s beyond the pale. That’s not what honorable or decent people do.

You don’t mock the shedding of a man’s blood. You don’t ridicule his torture at the hands of a savage enemy. You don’t diminish his service in uniform.

It simply is not done.

And yet this Barack Obama surrogate, on one of the Sunday talk shows, did exactly that.

And those sort of things don’t happen by accident. The Obama campaign is one of the best-run and most-disciplined presidential runs in memory. It doesn’t make false steps and it doesn’t do anything without thinking it through and measuring it for effect and benefit.

So this wasn’t an accident.

The campaign will say it is. It will imply that Wesley Clark got carried away. That he was speaking for himself. That Barack Obama doesn’t feel that way. That he disavows what Wesley Clark said.

Only it has been a wink-and-a-nod disavowal. Obama gets the benefit of hitting his opponent below the belt without actually having to get his hands dirty.

A man with eight years in the Illinois legislature, in his first term in the Senate, whose biggest achievement seems to have been protesting for more welfare for a neighborhood he didn’t live in, that man doesn’t have the right to send his water boy to throw stones at another man’s life.

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you support McCain or Obama. You can respect someone’s service to the country without wanting to vote for him. It’s not some Freudian thing where whoever has the longest resume gets the job. People can consider a candidate’s life experience or not, as they choose.

But you don’t desecrate the service of a man’s life because you’re trying to cover for your own candidate’s inadequacies in that regard.

If you’re an Obama supporter, you’re not selling experience – because he doesn’t have it. You’re selling something else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Different candidates have different strengths, and you accentuate your candidate’s strength. That’s valid.

But it’s not valid to commit the arson of character assassination. If Obama is going to do politics differently, he ought to start soon, because so far he’s doing it exactly the way it’s always been done.

Only more savagely.

Because this nation reveres men who have served as John McCain has served.

He was born in a Navy family, in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was stationed. The son of a four-star admiral who was the son of a four-star admiral, he didn’t have a hometown or longtime childhood friends. He, like countless other military brats, was dragged from post to post, paying a price – like all members of military families – for his father’s service.

John McCain was fated to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. The two previous John McCains were graduates and while most kids get to chase their own dreams, he had a family tradition to uphold.

A tradition he followed through a complete career in the United States Navy. Yes, he was board the Oriskany when it burned. Yes, he went to Vietnam. Yes, he was shot down. Yes, he was mangled in the crash of his jet and, yes, he was tortured. Yes, he is handicapped to this day by his war wounds and as a result of the torture.

Yes, he came back on active duty and finished his Navy career, retiring as a captain.

He did his duty. He did what his country asked him.

And to have some snot-nose political wannabe say that John McCain "rode" a jet, and commanded a squadron in "peacetime," as if to minimize what he has done and how he has served is immoral and dishonorable.

And it is supremely offensive and disrespectful.

Not just to John McCain, but to all who have served in the Armed Forces.

According to Wesley Clark, peacetime service isn’t really service. That must come as news to those whose tours of duty didn’t fall during a time of war.

And if Wesley Clark ridicules fighter pilots, what does he think about the mechanics who maintained the jets those pilots "rode?" What does he think about the military clerks and cooks and supply sergeants? What does he think about them?

If John McCain’s service is a trifling which can be mocked and discounted, then so can the service of the countless veterans who look up to him.

There is a warrior ethos which says you never leave a man behind. It means that American fighting men always back one another up. They are always faithful to one another and they can always count on one another.

Wesley Clark has violated that ethic.

He has walked on another man’s flag.

And that says more about him and his presidential candidate than it does about John McCain.