I don't know who Asness is aside from being a highly successful hedge fund manager -- an occupation for which I don't even know how to pack a briefcase. But he is speaking truth to power, which is exactly what the American people need to hear. "The President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large," he writes. "Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying. ... The President's comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet somehow I don't think the hedge funds will be following ACORN's lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protestors soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer."

Contrast this fiery defense of capitalism -- the latest cause of the "culture war," according to Arthur Brooks, the new head of the American Enterprise Institute -- with the gag-inducing mush almost simultaneously offered by Jeb Bush, Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney during a political event during which, as the Washington Post noted, these proto-presidential hopefuls "did not directly attack President Obama, rarely used the word 'Republican,' and engaged in a healthy dose of self-criticism."

"You can't beat something with nothing," burbled former-presidential brother Jeb Bush during this GOP-lite squish-o-rama. "And the other side has something. I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that."

The "other side" has something, all right -- possession of the economy, which is nothing to "respect." It is something to oppose.

As Asness does. "This is America," Asness concludes. "We have a free-enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for 200-plus years. When it fails it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the Oval Office to be scolded for disobedience by the President."

Could there be a pulse in the body politic? Be still, my political heart. This is the vital spirit of rebellion that just might lead conservatives to declare: Hedge Fund Man for President.