Not long after Rudy Giuliani announced his foreign policy advisory team last year, liberal bloggers and journalists cried that the group represented “AIPAC’s Dream Team” (Harper’s Ken Silverstein), was ginning to implement “bloody, bloody, bloody foreign policy” (Matthew Yglesias) and that “RUDY GIULIANI WILL KILL US ALL” (The American Prospect). One could simultaneously disagree with such unhinged assessments of what a Giuliani foreign policy might look like and still believe that the essence of liberal criticism was not unfair: to a large degree, we can divine what a candidate thinks based upon the sort of people from whom he seeks counsel.
This non-partisan analytical instrument is useless, apparently, when it comes to the people advising Barack Obama. Over the past few months, several of Barack Obama’s advisers (foreign policy advisers in particular) have entered the spotlight for things they have said or written which are supposedly at odds with the beliefs of the candidate for whom they work. First, there was the incident in which Obama’s top economics advisor, Austan Goolsbee, reassured Canadian consular officials in Chicago that Obama’s anti-NAFTA position wasn’t sincere. Then, there was the now-departed Samantha Power, who told the BBC that Barack Obama’s real position on Iraq withdrawal was not, in actual fact, what he’d been saying on the campaign trail. Like Goolsbee, we were told at the time that Ms. Power was “just” an adviser — a past one, at this point — and that what she said about the Iraq War is ultimately irrelevant.
On a similar note, last week we discovered — thanks to the tireless reporting of the New York Sun’s Eli Lake — that Colin Kahl, head of Obama’s Iraq working group, wrote a paper calling for 80,000 American troops to stay in Iraq until at least 2010. Susan Rice, another Obama foreign policy adviser, told Lake that, “Barack Obama cannot be held accountable for what we all write.” Finally, a 2003 interview with top Obama adviser Tony McPeak recently surfaced in which the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force said of Iraq, “We’ll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right.” This is the exact same sentiment that John McCain expressed in his much-distorted “100 years” remark.
Of course, given the pattern I’ve elucidated, I presume that we cannot hastily jump to the conclusion that McPeak — like Power, Kahl and Goolsbee before him, and who knows how many advisers into the future — necessarily represents the views of Barack Obama. A great journalistic assignment for an enterprising young reporter would be to find out what Obama does believe.
I concur that President Obama’s words are elusive. However, he is now required to be direct and specific with his actions. This will inevitably call for him to take actions which will embolden some while disenfranchising others.
Along with the keys to the White House come responsibility and accountability. That is why, with every political victory rest the seeds of eventual defeat.
When campaigning, Obama was able to tap into all pools of grievance and anger. In winning the presidency, Obama is a different person to each person who perceives him. It would appear that his first impulse is to be all things too all peoples. For example, his “don’t ask don’t tell” as a sop the the gay community; his signing a bill to close Gitmo (at some unknown date) in the future as a sop to the anti-war community.
However, hard decisions will inevitably need to be made during his term in office; decisions that don’t lend themselves to the satisfaction of all contingents.
…what is implied is that the reason we are in trouble now is because the present generation has acted irresponsibly. Is that really at the heart of America’s difficulties at home or in the world?
In a word, yes. Obama is correct in what he says, Mr. Judis.
From the MBA factories of the 80s that churned out a generation of short-sighted, wisdom-free stewards of the financial realm, to the baby-boomers who can’t think of any reason not to have just what they want when they want it, to the feckless leaders of Europe, Canada and Latin America and the governors and mayors of great US cities and states who for the most part tolerate contemptible behavior, to the mullahs and sheiks of the Muslim world who tried to buy off radical fundamentalists in their midst and instead unleashed their nihilism and anarchy on the world…pretty much ALL of our problems in this era of unprecedented wealth are due to a global culture of irresponsibility. We could use a return of some of the kinds of modest, abstemious leaders of the late 1800s/early 1900s, who genuinely acted as stewards not self-dealers.
It seems to me that when Mr. Obama speaks with clarity and without ambiguity, “The first thing I will do as President is…”, we can be sure it is not, and he won’t. When he uses double-wockky and jabber-speak, and one has no idea what he has said, those things which are them are those things what he will do. Clear? His oratorical Godfather is surely Professor Irwin Corey, the World’s Greatest Authority.
Um, …sword. Though I feel a bit broadly sore today. Heh.
“…what is implied is that the reason we are in trouble now is because the present generation has acted irresponsibly. Is that really at the heart of America’s difficulties at home or in the world?
In a word, yes. Obama is correct in what he says, Mr. Judis.”
He is correct in the sense that his statement is utterly without intellectual content. Every generation in the history of humankind can be accurately said to have “acted irresponsibly.” (Perhaps you would care to offer a counterexample, Mr. Beach?) Human nature is imperfect, and the vacuous orator can always wax eloquent on how our imperfections should be faced and overcome through “hard work, struggle and sacrifice” to achieve “a new era of responsibility.” After all, “we are the change we have been waiting for.”
This gaseous rhetoric appears to be the best he has to offer. It has proven a useful substitute for content, so one wonders if it is what the nation wants and deserves. I hope not.
But unlike our friends on the left for whom words are everything …
You do crack me up!
What we need to keep in mind is that with Obama’s speech today, the comparisons to Lincoln remain intact. After all, it was Lincoln’s second inagural address which history remembers most.
The American people have been conned. It’s really that simple. Eventually they will come around; they seem always to have done so. Let’s hope that they’ll be quick enough this time.
Wow! They are running out of parking for 500 private jets for the VIP guests. And Obama talks about warming planet? What an irony. Celebrity should pledge to fly commercial next time like the common folks.
I know there are only so many patriotic thing one cans say, but I just caught Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) doing a ChangeFest 09 piece where he intermixes Obama’s Inaugural speech with segments of Bush speeches where Bush is saying nearly the identical thing.
Obviously Obama has been hanging with Joe Biden too much.
The American people have been conned. It’s really that simple. Eventually they will come around; they seem always to have done so.
They do. Get conned, that is. Eventually they do. Come around, that is. They just did. Your drunken, lying war criminal is back in Texas, his only friends the fire ants.
Hartland is one sick little puppy, repeating himself over and over again. Like a broken pencil, pointless.