John McCain met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and, at least from the pool report, it appears that there was a genuine expression of affection and understanding between the two. Meanwhile, Barack Obama seems poised for some reassessment on Iraq, or at least a political course correction. And there is a difference between the two.
The former, a true reassessment, would entail some real recognition that the changes in Iraq are significant both on the political and military fronts. (As Peter Hegseth points out, so far Obama’s utterances and official campaign statements remain frozen in 2006.) This would entail an understanding that the surge was responsible for these turn of events (they did not come about by magic) and that absent a continued commitment to aid the Iraqis’ progress much, if not all, of the progress could be lost. So far, we’ve seen none of this from Obama.
An Obama course correction that is mere political cover may be more likely. Obama may emphasize that he always left some wriggle room for the pace of withdrawal (paging Samantha Power!) and that recent developments simply allow him to push ahead with his plans to refocus our forces elsewhere.
The difference between these two options is not simply rhetorical. The voters are entitled to know if an Obama administration really will see through political and military challenges that remain in Iraq, resist calls from the Democratic base to adhere to his previous withdrawal plans, and express a commitment to Iraq in a way that projects certainly to both Iraqis and those who seek to undermine a unified and stable government. Absent a fully articulated policy pronouncement, all that seems a pipe dream. Granted, even if Obama managed a very deliberate and full-throated policy reversal, voters are entitled to wonder if this, too, will become another “never mind” policy shift a month or a year from now.
We will see in the weeks ahead if there is no change, an atmospheric change or a genuine shift in Obama’s thinking. And then voters will have to assess how meaningful and credible that change of heart, if any, really is. What we do know is that had Obama had his way — either when he was advocating a troop withdrawal on a monthly basis or when he voted to immediately cut funding — none of the progress we now have seen would have come about. That tells us something not just about Iraq but about his potential reaction to future, as yet unknown, crises.
Aside from all this, it is not clear how much this all matters in the presidential race. (Thomas Friedman may be right that it is on the economy and not Iraq or even the wider issue of Islamic terrorism where the race will be won or lost.) Whether the voters care about Iraq and whether they will consider Obama’s failure to support the most significant strategic turnaround in recent military history to be a fatal error remains very much an open question.
Weaknesses, you say. Looks to me like your party just rendered itself irrelevant in the House. In the Senate, it’s getting ready to cave in — if it knows what’s good for it. Meanwhile, there’s an institutional power vacuum, as your RNC is leaderless. Into the power vacuum has stepped your all purpose druig addicted nutcase, Rush Limbaugh, to provide a face that makes Newt Gingrich look like your friendly uncle.
And you pretend to be happy. What drugs are you on? Can you spare any of them? What the hell, I’d like to see in colors too.
In addition to what is said, during the campaign Obama showed a thin skin i.e. attacking Fox news. He has continued to show that he is thin skinned and not a good winner
I didn’t hear about Obama attacking Fox, but if it’s true I am all for it. It’s about time someone kicked Fox News in the ass. Those fiction writers have had it coming for years.
Excellent post. Superb.
Thanks, Jonas. I aim to please.
Ahithopel is consistently on the mark
The “conservatives” in the house didn’t give a crap about fiscal responsibility for the past 8 years. Now that the President’s a democrat, they found religion. They have no “beliefs” whatsoever, beyond representing the incoherent grievances of white southerners. They would have voted down any bill proposed by a Democrat even if it was to eliminate HUD and the department of education and to exile homosexuals from america.
I remember reading somewhere a story about Obama Sr, told by Obama Jr, where his father and grandfather went to some bar and the father was verbally abused by some racist drunk. So Obama Sr. talked to that stupid man and the racist was so impressed that he apologized and said he would not be racist anymore. I think Obama Jr. claimed that he heard a story from his grandfather.
Good post. Obama is a young man who has had his way smoothed by others all his life. His grandmother sacrificed to send him to the most expensive private school in Hawaii. Somebody sent him to Occidental, then Columbia, then Harvard Law. The details are vague; no grades published, for example. He drifted into law, then community organizing with nothing to show for it. The Annenberg Challenge resulted in negligible results except, of course, the money was spent. His election to office was managed; all the other names on the ballot were eliminated. His only loss experience came at the hands of Bobby Rush. He has no experience with opposition and that will test his character. So far, it is not that impressive.
Excellent post.
I would bet Obama was always a narcissist, however.
Abandoned by 3 parents, it’s now all about him, and ‘look what I have achieved’.
Obama is a young man who has had his way smoothed by others all his life.
Yeah, it’s been outregous. Why, you’d almost think that Obama started out as a rotten student and then was admitted to Andover prep and then Yale and then Harvard Business School because he was a legacy. You’d think he started and oil company on the strength oif his father’s connections, and then bankrupted it, and skated from insider-trading charges because his father’s SEC wasn’t about to go after the preesident’s son.
You’d think that he was handed an executive position in Texas because of family connections, and that his father set him up in politics. You’d think that his father’s Supreme Court installed him in office, and you’d think he then ran the U.s. into the ground.
Yeah, that’s Obama alright: A lying, incompetent, drunken silver-spoon Republican war criminal who never did an honest day’s work in his pathetic life, and who took a country at peace, with prosperity and a budget surplus, and with great respect around the world, and drove it straight off a cliff.
Since Vietnam people have lamented the passing of Democrats in the FDR/Truman/Kennedy tradition. The idea that enemies can be reasoned with or that conservatives are poor, benighted souls from Mars (or maybe Kansas) is not unique. You do get some extreme manifestations of it from time to time, such as Carter. During the election season Carter was the example people would compare Obama to in their worst case scenario based on the disparate pieces of his biography and the seeming expressions of his unguarded core beliefs that people would hear about from time to time. But once uttered a certain remorse would set in that no one could possibly be foolish enough to emulate such a mindset given the example that had already actually been set. Still, when you hear about “transformative politics”, about recapturing some supposed lost innocence or the mantra of change for change’s sake, what you are struck with is not the particulars but the overarching attitude, the basic lack of humility. That was after all Carter’s main weakness; that he saw himself as smarter and more moral than those around him. We shall see.
Poor Mr. Hartland. Sir, I believe you are slobbering on your keyboard again. For someone on the Dem side (the winning side these days), you sound angry, frustrated and confused. You should be happy! Your House has just passed a wonderful bill that will solve our economic problems and improve the Smithsonian! Its OK, I still find you amusing, though I am concerned about your mental health. Just keep repeating all those Democrat talking points, and I’m sure everyone at Commentary will be convinced. Please, though, try to avoid any original thoughts – so far so good on that front. And definately never address the substance of the issue. This way you’ll continue to sound like a fourth-rate Keith Olbermann with no knowledge of sports.
By the way, drop the Michael Moore-ism from your rants, and you’ve proved a couple of things that many conservatives agree with: (1) Bush and Obama have more in common than initially meets the eye; both started a bit callow and both started office believing that their personality could make bipartisanship happen; and (2) yes, the Republican spent taxpayers money like drunken sailors (its a disgrace for sure) and now the Dems are planning to spend our money like drunken sailors on crack. But to acknowledge this perspective would go beyond the hatred and talking points that you’ve apparently internalized. I’ll bet you’ll rant and rave that the Contentions is filled with a bunch of people just repeating Republican talking points. I wouldn’t agree, but even if it is true, aren’t you just doing the same thing except from the other gang’s list? I detect no hope from you, only anger. Show some hope! Know hope! Praise the Stimulus Bill!
johnny, Obama did not use legacy, he is a beneficiary of the affirmative action, as he himself proudly admits:
http://media.www.hlrecord.org/media/storage/paper609/news/2008/10/30/Election2008/Record.Retrospective.Obama.On.Affirmative.Action-3515294.shtml
That is why the biggest secret now is Obama’s GPA in Columbia and his LSAT.
You see, if conservatism is not an ideology grounded and justified by reasoning, then conservatism is something more like a culture: a cloud of misunderstandings, delusions, animosities, tribal grievances, unexamined traditions. I think the Obama camp is out to break up the culture of conservatism. If they can silence Rush, if they can expose those homophobic conservatives to nice homosexual couples, if we can show them really nice (illegal) immigrants who work hard to make a living for their children, then (say the Obama folks) we are making progress in disintegrating conservative culture, breaking up the irrational forces that make people speak and act in a conservative manner. Because conservatives oppose gay marriage simply because they hate gay people, right? And oppose illegal immigration simply because they’re racist, correct? The notion that conservatives hold their positions because of well-considered principles doesn’t even enter the picture.
This is a great mistake. Conservatives are conservatives, or at least the great majority of them are, because they are deeply convinced of conservative truths and principles. However much they may wish it, the Obama camp might be able to blow away the clouds of conservative “culture,” but they’re still going to find conservatives underneath, rooted to the ideology by strong reasons.
Obama’s basic conceit, the notion of post-partisanship itself, that he could overcome “the old hatreds” and “the old lines of tribe,” that those “tired old arguments” would simply “no longer apply,” was hubristic beyond belief. The point, essentially, is that all political disagreement and discord would have wafted away into the air if Obama had been present. Those arguments no longer apply? By whose authority? I still believe that an unborn child is worth protecting; I still believe the 2nd amendment is important; I still believe that it is better to free the market and limit government. Who is Obama to tell me that these arguments no longer apply? The conceit that “we’re beyond those things now”…well, why should I believe that? It all boils down to, “Well, we have Obama now.” This is dangerous, and it almost seems as though the more Obama is attacked by us, the more the Obamaphiles elevate him to higher and higher godlike status. They are so fierce in their defense of him, so determined that he should not be seen to have done something wrong, that they are making him into a God, incapable of wrong, infallible. But if Obama is a divine figure, the speaker of the truth, doesn’t that make us into heretics?
Obama believed that he could dispel our age-old disagreements because he thought there were not really fundamental disagreements, just hatreds and tribal suspicions that could be caused to fade away. But you cannot smile away a disagreement. A charm offensive, no matter how many milk and cookies you have shared, does nothing to change that there are true, profound, enduring ethical, philosophical and theological differences between the right and the left. Until Obama understands the depths of those differences, and learns to see the world also from the conservative’s point of view, his groping after “bipartisanship” is nothing more than political theater. Bipartisanship, for Obama, is trying to pierce through the fogs of conservative culture in order to illuminate for those beknighted conservatives the glistering rationality of liberalism.
As to #2, you allege that I pretend to be happy. I am not happy to see my fears confirmed in Obama’s weaknesses. If Obama actually had the courage to pursue true post-partisanship, one where he truly entered into conservative thought–if not to stay, at least to see its coherence from the inside-out–then I would be happy, and then he could truly be a transformational President. He could ask for compromises from both parties, kick his own party into gear, and incorporate the best ideas coming from both sides of the aisle. If Obama were truly being postpartisan here, he would have forced the Democrats to craft the bill with at least the slightest iota of Republican involvement. But that’s not what Obama is doing. Obama is painting a veneer of gentility and condescension, while driving through Congress a liberal dream of a package, a vast transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected, flowing rivers of cash toward the guilds and interest-groups that put the Democrats in power, shoring up their position for coming elections by expanding the size of government and expanding the sizes of the guilds, creating even more and more federal bureaucracy that will depend on them for approval, and overall a grab bag filled with every pork-barrel project the Democrats have wanted funded going back for years.
I’ve seen Obama rattled badly only once: when the Sarah Palin phenomenon “hit”, for about 9 days in early through mid-September, Obama wasn’t the central character anymore. You could see in his speeches, the people were listening differently. They seemed bored. The NEW phenomenon –Sarah from Wasilla — was more compelling than Obama.
And it wounded him. His pride was hurt. And it made him quite angry. Because he is a true narcissist, he internalized “Sarah”. That’s when he came out with his “lipstick on a pig” remark. It was definitely meant for Sarah, though Obama always gives himself an out (i.e. giving Hillary the finger, while scratching his head).
When the economy fell apart, it gave those inclined to vote for ‘change’, good cover: they now had an issue they could make themselves believe that a fresh face could take on with vigor.
But, without that economic collapse, I think Obama was about 3 or 4 days from losing his cool, tipping off who he really is: a guy who seems incredibly nice and decent on the outside, but has a vicous mean streak in him. HE STAYED in that Nazi-like church for 20 years listening to you know who.
Palin rattled him to the core. When rattled like that, is hen he starts to crumble. It doesn’t seem to happen with men, only with women.
Lastly, I have a theory that never disappoints: when a liberal says something/anything, you know that the exact opposite is true. As an example, when Obama said at many campaign stops, “this election isn’t about me, it’s about you!” –I knew that it was all about him. Try this shorthand system out. It always works!
Maine’s Michael, I would venture to say that Obama is pathologically narcissistic. Here’s a great quote from Sam Vaknin: “Narcissism is conspicuous nihilism – and the cult’s leader serves as a role model, annihilating the Man, only to re-appear as a pre-ordained and irrestible force of nature.” http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
We’re in big trouble.
#16 Seth: Palin still rattles him to the core, it just is not apparent on the surface at this moment. Watch for it in the next couple of days when both he and Sarah are at the Alfalfa dinner, as well as the imminent eruption of the volcano in Alaska. If that volcano happens to affect the citizens in a manner befitting a natural disaster, the interaction between Governor and President will be interesting to watch. Taking Ahithophel’s excellent post above as an example, with Obama you have no core principles – that is why he appears to be vacillating from pillar to post at the moment. With Palin, you are flush with core conservative principles that guide her as she governs. That is why she simultaneously exhilarates the base while driving the moonbats, well, batty.
I’ll add one more thing. Obama is the President today because of a once in a lifetime financial meltdown. So I’m not sure the cult of Obama will amount to much should the economic problems continue.
I have a theory that never disappoints: when a liberal says something/anything, you know that the exact opposite is true
True enough. Them damn liberals never should have come up with the following:
1. Iraq’s connection to 9/11
2. Iraqi WMD
3. “We don’t torture.”
4. “Mission accomplished.”
5. “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”
6. “The economy is fundamentally sound”
Want any more examples of liberal screw ups, you neocon, dual citizen Bund traitor?
I’ve been saying for months that Obama will be a disaster for many of the reasons Mike K. stated. This man grew up in a bubble. He’s never done anything or stuck with anything. Everything to him has involved his next step up. Case in point is that stupid playground taunt at Limbaugh. Pure rookie stuff. But I’m sure for the last 15 years he’s been surrounded by people who just know that Rush is an idiot and a demagogue. So that’s just what naturally flies out of his mouth. Get ready for four years of this.
Ahithophel:
That was a brilliant post. It cuts incisively to the shallowness of Obama’s change mantra and demonstrates what a true revolutionary would be. Wonderful!
Whah?:
Also an outstanding post. It is sad to see angry people lash out, when what they really need is to just try a little thinking.
There are a number of very perceptive comments on this thread, starting with Ahithophel’s perceptive post that started it. But I read them with some sadness. Why do we have to state the obvious at this late date? The election is over, and, as Mr. Obama trumpets, “I won!”. More and more people seem to be coming to the realization that we have elected Arnie Ivyleague, who hasn’t quite figured out whether he’s in Washington running the free world or in Barnstable for the summer auditioning for the lead in some political re-write of “How to Succeed in Business …”.
There are no re-runs in presidential elections, and you can’t impeach a fellow for terminal superficiality. We are stuck with this waif of a man for four long years. A that is a sad thing to contemplate.
Their RNC is leaderless no longer, although it is not easy to see how Governor Us-Too can be of much assistance to the neocomradely cause.
Meanwhile Neocomrade #0 in the present sequence is a treat, a neo-organism exquisitely evolved to fit its peculiar niche in time and space: the trouble with the President, it in effect advises us, is that he has “never met a payroll” and has not a clue “how to run a railroad.” Here is double-barrel bilge and sloganeerin’ of such high antiquity in the annals of the Party of Grant that it is as good as new, if not even better.
And of course after Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash, what could be clearer than that only the MBA classes can hope to save us?
On the other hand, there is no reason why economic reactionaries should despair. True, the barefoot boy from Cook County [*] has Delilah at his left hand, ever emitting siren calls to “lard it up into a hyper-partisan monstrosity,” but immediately to the right of Mr. Obama stands President Summers, who knows all about the theory of railroads and payrolls, and has moreover proved himself a child prodigy at interpersonal relations.
Give Larry six weeks or so to get up to speed, and Mizz Delilah might as well go back to her kids and her kitchen.
Happy days.
___
[*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Willkie
We are stuck with this waif of a man for four long years. A that is a sad thing to contemplate.
Yes, but we will be blessed with eight years — trust me, not merely four — years of whining wingnuts. And that is a hilarious thing to contemplate!