In a front-page Washington Post story today — headlined “Angry Congress lashes out at Obama” — we read this:

Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration. Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home.

What is happening is that the myriad troubling signs for Obama over the past several months — crumbling support for his health-care efforts, a huge loss of support among independents, a dispirited base, an energized opposition, growing approval of the GOP’s agenda — are now manifesting themselves in election results (see the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races) and unhappiness among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

President Obama finds himself in a difficult situation. That isn’t in itself unusual; presidents always encounter political troubles along the way. What is unusual is how quickly Obama has found himself in this precarious position. The promise of the early days of his administration seem a lifetime ago. An expression like “hope and change,” which played quite well during the campaign, now seems like a stale, empty phrase, the product of a skilled public-relations operation. Now that the reality and hardships of governing have emerged, Obama has shown himself to be, so far at least, overmatched.

It has been a difficult first year. Obama’s signature domestic initiative, health care, is deeply unpopular. Unemployment is above 10 percent and won’t be dropping significantly any time soon. The issues the country is focused on are ones that play to the advantage of the GOP. The nation is becoming more conservative in the Age of Obama. His party is increasingly nervous and restive as its members see what awaits them in 2010.

During the campaign, Barack Obama made it all sound so easy. It wasn’t supposed to be this hard for liberalism’s “sort of God,” was it?

Charles Murray, one of conservatism’s most important public intellectuals for the past quarter-century, has done his homework on Glenn Beck. Murray’s assessment — thoughtful as usual — can be found here:

If you want to understand just one reason why the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in civilian court is reckless and irresponsible, watch Senator Lindsey Graham grill Attorney General Eric Holder over Miranda rights on Osama bin Laden. Graham is excellent; Holder is not. The attorney general is evasive, unable to offer a coherent rationale for his decision. The closer this decision is examined, the worse it looks. It should cost, and I suspect it will cost, the administration a great deal politically.

For someone who is closely involved in politics, I guess I am a rarity: I don’t find Sarah Palin to be particularly interesting. I will be surprised if she runs for the GOP nomination in 2012; I would be more surprised if she wins it; and I would be shocked if she won the presidency. I have written before about why I don’t think she is the future of the GOP, including the fact that rebuilding its reputation depends on emerging public figures who are conservative and principled, who radiate intellectual depth and calmness of purpose. Representative Paul Ryan, Governor Mitch Daniels, and former Governor Jeb Bush are the kinds of figures we need, and the campaign by Governor-elect Bob McDonnell are the kind Republicans should run.

With that said, the degree to which Palin evokes fury, contempt, and anger among her critics is nothing short of amazing. It is visceral and almost clinical. And it cannot be based on what she has done (which as governor of Alaska is fairly limited and not terribly controversial), on the views she holds (which are mainstream conservative), or on her relative lack of experience when McCain picked her as his vice-presidential choice (Palin’s experience was comparable to Barack Obama’s, who after all was running for president). What explains the fierce reaction to her is, in part, I think, her affect, the way she talks (and winks), the background she has emerged from, the populism she seems to embody. Palinism, as I understand it, is less a coherent philosophy or set of ideas and more an attitude and spirit. In that sense, she is a cultural figure much more than a political one.

If you believe, as I do, that the GOP once again needs to become the “party of ideas” — as it did under Ronald Reagan — then Palin is not the solution to what ails it. At this stage, based on the interviews I have seen with her, she doesn’t seem able to articulate the case for conservatism in a manner that is compelling or even particularly persuasive. She is nothing like, to take three individuals I would hold up as public models, Margaret Thatcher, William Bennett, and Antonin Scalia — people brimming with ideas, knowledgeable and formidable, intellectually well-grounded, and impossible to dismiss. That, of course, doesn’t mean that Palin doesn’t have a role to play in the Republican party or contributions to make to it. And what Palin has revealed about some of her critics is, in the words of my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Yuval Levin, “the unfortunate and unattractive propensity of the American cultural elite to treat those who are not deemed part of the elect with condescension and contumely.”

The intensity of feelings Sarah Palin evokes from almost all sides is remarkable — and for me, a bit puzzling. I don’t think she has earned either adoration or contempt. But as we’re seeing, she elicits plenty of both.

The decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a federal courthouse in Manhattan, where he and his four co-conspirators will receive the full array of rights enjoyed by American citizens, will show the world that our system of justice is an enlightened model for the rest of the world. It will “vindicate this country’s basic values” and “stand as a symbol in the world of something different from what the terrorists represent.” We will be adhering to the “rule of law.” Or so Obama defenders argue.

But imagine KSM being found not guilty, which is a possibility. What happens then? According to Democratic Senator Jack Reed, “under basic principles of international law, as long as these individuals pose a threat, they can be detained, and they will.” Come again? You mean if KSM is acquitted he will still be detained? Yes indeed, according to Senator Reed. He will not be released, “because under the principle of preventive detention, which is recognized during hostilities,” we can continue to hold KSM.

Well, now. It seems to me as though President Obama and Attorney General Holder need to be asked whether they agree with Senator Reed. If not — if they believe that the proud, self-confessed mastermind of the deadliest attack in history on the American homeland should be able to walk free if acquitted in this trial — then Obama and Holder should certainly say so. If KSM were acquitted, the president and his attorney general should proclaim from the rooftops that Mohammed is a free man, found innocent in a civilian court of law, and then allow voters to render a judgment on their decision.

If, on the other hand, Obama and Holder agree with Senator Reed, they should state that as well.

Right now Obama and Holder, in saying they are answering the “call to justice and fairness,” take great pride in presenting themselves as committed to equal justice under the law. That they are willing to try KSM in a civilian court is supposedly proof of their enlightened worldview. Except that if President Obama and Attorney General Holder agree with Senator Reed, it is all a fiction: If KSM is acquitted, he will not walk the streets of New York City or of any other place. He will be detained. The verdict in his trial will be rendered inoperative. And the justice and fairness that Obama and Holder speak about will turn out to be quite different from what most people who are praising Obama’s decision have in mind. The “rule of law” our president and his attorney general hope to showcase will actually be a game that has been rigged at the outset. It will be Alice in Wonderland justice (first the verdict, then the trial; and if the trial turns out differently from what you had hoped, ignore the verdict). If that’s the case, then what Obama and Holder are doing will turn out to be a very dangerous stunt done only for optics. Their actions will be revealed as cynical and misleading. And engaging in this charade in order to impress the rest of the world will do significant harm to our nation.

Every month the Obama administration seems to outdo itself in terms of making terribly unwise decisions. This one ranks high among them. It will add another damaging brushstroke to the Obama canvas. The current administration is revealing itself one act at a time; the curtain is being pulled back on it one decision at a time. The liberal, and in some cases the radical, actions of the Obama administration are piling up like cars in a rush-hour traffic accident. But a day of reckoning will come, I suspect; first to Mr. Obama’s party, and then to Mr. Obama himself.

The Obama administration is pursuing the prosecution of the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in New York. In light of this astonishing decision, I was reminded by a friend that, according to the New York Times, Sheikh Mohammed met his captors with cocky defiance at first, telling one veteran CIA officer that he would talk only when he got to New York and was assigned a lawyer. It looks as though Sheikh Mohammed has seen his defiance vindicated. He has now found an administration more amenable to his view of justice than was the previous one. The Holderization of American justice continues. And I suspect that there will be bad consequences all around for this action.

If you want a measure of how deep is the commitment of those on the Left to surrender and retreat in Afghanistan and Iraq, take a look at Garry Wills’s short piece in the New York Review of Books titled “A One-Term President?: The Choice.” In it, Wills argues:

It is unlikely that we will soon have another president with the moral and rhetorical force to talk us out of a foolish commitment that cannot be sustained without shame and defeat. If it costs him his presidency, what other achievement can match it?

Wills often reflects the views of a significant portion of the Democratic base. As you can see, Barack Obama’s political life continues to get more and more complicated by the day.

I wanted to follow up on the comments by Jennifer and Max regarding President Obama’s seeming inability to make a decision on General McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan. To put things in context: the McChrystal report was sent to the Obama administration at the end of August. McChrystal was emphatic in his 66-page request: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

According to our commanding general in Afghanistan, then, we have a window of 12 months to regain the initiative or we risk losing the war. We are now approaching the middle of November — two and a half months after McChrystal’s request — and based on media reports, President Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national-security team. If true — and I know from my time in the White House that what is reported sometimes reflects, rather than the thinking of the president,  the views of aides trying to influence a decision via public leaks  — this is both stunning and reckless. As one person pointed out to me, the same president who wants to ram through health-care legislation, despite the fact that we don’t face a health-care emergency, seems unable to settle on a hugely consequential, time-sensitive decision in the midst of a war.

I have not begrudged President Obama the time to carefully think through a decision on Afghanistan — but this is ridiculous. This issue should have been front and center for the administration the moment it was clear Obama won the presidency. He has already presented (in March) his “new” strategy for Afghanistan. The fact that he wants to revisit his decision may be understandable, except for the fact that his foot-dragging is now harming us. Sometimes presidents are forced to make decisions based on external events and pressing outside needs. “The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance,” Henry Kissinger wrote in the first volume of his memoirs, White House Years. Governing the nation does not afford you the luxuries you have when conducting a college seminar.

President Obama not only needs to make a decision soon; once he does, assuming he does, we face the logistical challenges of getting the troops in place. Precious time has already been lost. If after all the time that’s been lost, Obama is now jettisoning all the options he has been presented with, including the McChrystal option, then what we are witnessing is extraordinarily irresponsible. Sometimes you can lose a war by not choosing. And that is the path we may well be on right now, if media reports are correct.

President Obama needs to get a grip on this process soon. Decisions need to be made and a war needs to be won.

The results of races for the governorship of Virginia and New Jersey were ominous for Democrats. The most alarming development for them should be that independents voted for the GOP candidates by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. This was a sea change, and it took place in only a year.

There are several reasons Democrats are faltering at this juncture. But one explanation, I think, is more relevant than all others: President Obama is pushing a hugely expensive and ambitious domestic agenda the public simply does not want. Many Americans also believe that what Obama is doing is a diversion from the pressing issues confronting the country — a weak economy, the highest rates of unemployment and underemployment in more than a quarter century (the figure now stands at 17.5 percent), and an exploding deficit and debt.

Virtually every public-opinion poll shows considerable resistance to ObamaCare, the signature domestic program of the Obama presidency. Cap-and-trade is about as unpopular. In addition, public sentiment is turning hard against government spending, control, and activism, which are at the core of Obamaism. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote about what I consider to be the deeper meaning of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier today. I wanted to add one observation about President Obama’s refusals to accept Chancellor Merkel’s invitation to attend the anniversary ceremonies in Germany today. The president was willing to fly to Copenhagen to make the case for bringing the Olympics to his hometown of Chicago. He will also fly to Oslo to accept his Nobel Prize later this year. Yet he could not find the time to travel to Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Wall, one of the most impressive achievements in the history of freedom and a tribute to the perseverance and sacrifice of America. Of course, Barack Obama had nothing whatever to do with it.

We have reached the point where one cannot help but wonder how deep Obama’s narcissism runs and how eager he is to celebrate what this nation has done, apart from what it has done for him. I am reminded of the revealing words of Michelle Obama, who in early 2008, when it looked as if her husband was closing in on the presidency, said this: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”

If Mr. Obama had not won the presidency, it seems to be an open question as to how much pride either of them would feel in America. His speeches apologizing for America — delivered in Cairo, in Europe, in Turkey, at the UN and elsewhere — only confirm that suspicion.

It is all rather astonishing for such questions to arise around an American president. But we are where we are.

It is an anniversary that should rank among the greatest we recognize: the fall of the Berlin Wall and, with it, the end of Soviet Communism and a successful conclusion to the Cold War. And yet it passes with very little attention, as almost an afterthought. It is an astonishing oversight on our part.

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The slide that Barack Obama and Democrats are experiencing would be notable under any circumstances; it is doubly so given the enormous expectations liberals had in the aftermath of the Obama election. I was reminded of this when I came across the May 6 issue of the New Republic, whose cover story, “Liberalism’s Moment: Barack Obama’s New Theory of the State,” was written by Franklin Foer and Noam Scheiber. The essay concludes this way:

Obama has groped toward a form of liberal activism that is eminently saleable in this country–both with the average voter, easily spooked by charges of creeping statism, and the constellation of political interests in Washington. Any economic program that lays out ambitious goals and actually has a chance of achieving them would have much to recommend it on those grounds alone. Better still, it may be the bold, persistent experimentation that the moment demands.

That eminently salable brand of liberal activism doesn’t look so eminently salable now in the wake of the staggering Democratic losses in Virginia and New Jersey — elections that have capped a year that has seen a historic loss of support for Mr. Obama.

Six months ago progressives were talking about “liberalism’s moment.” Silly books with silly titles — The Death of Conservatism comes to mind — were being published. Today liberals are unnerved. They see the country becoming more conservative, their agenda becoming more unpopular, Democrats losing races in states they normally own, Republican candidates winning independents by a 2-to-1 margin, and all the ingredients combining for a disastrous midterm election.

The intensity of the opposition to what Obama, Reid, and Pelosi want to do is as great and widespread as many of us have seen in politics — and it will only increase, especially if Democrats succeed in passing their terrible and unpopular health-care legislation. It will be akin to adding kindling wood and kerosene to a bonfire. I don’t think most of the political class yet understands this.

Things can, of course, change again. But there’s no question that this has been a brutal year for the hopes of liberals. Reality has shattered the mythology surrounding Barack Obama. And liberals must wonder what has brought them to this pass so quickly, after so much hope was invested in their young, elegant prince.

David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s top aides, was quoted earlier this week as saying that Obama is “not a magician. You don’t with a wave of a wand make everything different.” Mr. Axelrod is quite right about that. It’s a shame, then, that his boss gave the impression during the campaign that he was a figure with almost God-like powers. Talking about his ascension to the presidency it was Obama who said that he was –

absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. This was the moment, this was the time, when we came together to remake this great nation.

Most voters don’t want the president to pretend he is King Canute or Healer of Planets. They would settle for something a bit more modest, like getting unemployment (now over 10 percent) and the deficit and debt to go down instead of up.

1. The outcome of the New Jersey governor’s race and the magnitude of the victory by Bob McDonnell and other Virginia Republicans will have unusually far-reaching ramifications for a off-year election, including on the health-care debate. I have said before that while politicians follow polls carefully, they really follow election results carefully. And the results in New Jersey and Virginia will send a message to many Democrats: Obamaism in general – and ObamaCare in particular – can be hazardous to your political health.

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Here’s a stunning development: the New York Times’s theater-critic-turned-political-columnist Frank Rich is foot-stompin’ mad. The cause for Mr. Rich’s latest outburst is the race in New York’s 23rd District, in which the liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava was challenged by the Conservative party’s Doug Hoffman, forcing Scozzafava to withdraw. (She subsequently endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens.) For most people, this is an interesting intra-party skirmish with some potentially important political ramifications. But for Mr. Rich, it’s so much more than that. It’s going to set off a “riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war.” The northern district in New York “could become a G.O.P. killing field.” What’s going on there is evidence that “the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama.” And conservatives are “Jacobins” who are “re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode.” And in case that was too subtle, they are “the Stalinists of the right.”

This is what passes for stylish and temperate discourse on the Left — references to the Civil War and to Cambodian genocide, to the French Revolution and to one of the greatest mass murders in history – all in the context of a congressional race in New York’s 23rd District, mind you.

This also comes from a man who in August wrote a column — without irony — warning about the rise of what Richard Hofstadter called “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” and who earlier this summer castigated conservatives for their “toxic” rhetoric that is “getting louder each day of the Obama presidency.” It could lead, Rich has warned several times, to political violence. Conservatives, you see, are so terribly uncivil and so terribly indecent in their rhetoric. Coming from Rich, it is all rather comical.

But Mr. Rich’s latest tantrum is an indication that conservatism, rather than being “dead,” is actually doing quite well. After all, if conservatism were as moribund as we’re told by Sam Tanenhaus and others – and if the Left was in the ascendancy – then the latter would presumably be in a relatively cheerful and celebratory mood, ignoring conservatives because they were irrelevant. Instead Rich and others on the Left are going around the twist because they sense that the political ground is shifting beneath their feet. Their political Messiah is turning out not only to be mortal but also deeply flawed. His policies are generating widespread and intense opposition. The public seems to be rejecting what Mr. Obama is offering; and what he is offering may well cost Democrats politically.

For liberals, Barack Obama was supposed to be (take your pick) our new FDR, our new Lincoln, or “sort of God.” It wasn’t supposed to be this hard — and now that it is, people like Frank Rich are lashing out in desperation. It will only get worse. When thinking about what this all might do to poor Mr. Rich, it’s worth recalling the children’s folk rhyme and the fate of one of the three geese in a flock. One flew East, one flew West, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.

I’ve noticed something in our political commentary that I suspect I’m not alone in. When Democrats and liberals making sweeping electoral gains, it’s based on “hope” and “change,” on “civic engagement” and reversing a “culture of corruption.” It’s all very positive, upbeat, and high-minded. They want to build up the village. But when Republicans and conservatives make sweeping gains, or appear to be on the cusp of them, it’s based on negative, downbeat, and low-minded sentiments. They want to burn down the village.

Conservative ascendancy is rooted in things like “rage” and “anger” and is driven by “angry white men,” as if the elections are the outworking of some kind of troubling psychological condition. The late Peter Jennings embodied this view perfectly when he described the 1994 elections as a “temper tantrum” and compared what voters did that year to what you’d see from “an angry two-year-old.” We’re seeing the same thing now, on the eve of tomorrow’s elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York’s 23rd District. We don’t know how those elections are going to turn out just yet — but we can tell by the coverage how much of the press thinks they’re going to turn out. Let’s just say they’re worried it’ll be a bad day for Obama and for Obamaism.

As Jennifer has pointed out, David Brooks has penned an interesting column on Afghanistan and President Obama. After interviewing many experts on Afghanistan, he reports:

Their first concerns are about Obama the man. They know he is intellectually sophisticated. They know he is capable of processing complicated arguments and weighing nuanced evidence. But they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

These are of course precisely the qualities that George W. Bush showed during the debate in late 2006 and 2007 about the so-called surge in Iraq. At the time Bush was almost alone in his advocacy. His commending generals, George Casey and John Abizaid, opposed his plan, as did most members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and some members of Bush’s own war cabinet. Virtually the entire Democratic party, most of the foreign-policy establishment, and most of the public had turned hard against the war. They were certain the new counterinsurgency plan could not work and shouldn’t be tried.

Despite opposition as fierce and sustained as one can imagine (and far worse than anything President Obama is now experiencing), Bush and a small handful of others — the most important of whom were General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker -– persisted. They displayed raw determination. They fixated on a simple conviction and gripped it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. And they were proved right. In other words, the qualities Bush displayed in wartime are now the qualities Brooks and others (including me) are hoping Obama possesses.

I will add two other thoughts, the first being that tenacity needs to be conjoined to wisdom and right action. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty’s raw determination and enthusiasm in the Dardanelles campaign was a disaster, forced his resignation, and almost ended Winston Churchill’s career. What determines whether something qualifies as impressive tenacity or foolish obstinacy are results, outcomes, successes. And those things are unknowable at the time a decision is being debated and made.

A second related observation is that the virtues we look for in our leaders often shift like a kaleidoscope. The kind of tenacity Brooks praises was absolutely essential for the surge to succeed. But at the time, tenacity was viewed as stubbornness; a visceral and unflinching commitment to principle was seen as dogmatism; raw determination was thought to be a rigid unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances. Top leaders of the GOP came to Bush and urged him to end the Iraq war because of the damage it was doing to his party.

Lincoln and Churchill experienced the same phenomenon during the darkest days of the Civil War and World War II. The qualities that are now widely praised as virtues — the very qualities that helped make Lincoln and Churchill the greatest political leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries — were at the time widely regarded as vices. And very few people stood with them during the moments that mattered most. Tenacity and raw determination are easy when they are garnering applause from the public and the political class; to exhibit them in the face of catcalls and derision is much harder. To hold shape against relentless attacks is evidence of admirable human character. It is a vital trait for wartime leaders to possess. But it is not, by itself, enough.

How quickly things can turn. On May 15 of this year, in commenting on the intra-Republican contest between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio, the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne wrote, “Florida will be one of the clearest tests of whether Republican voters are more interested in doctrinal purity or in winning even if it means nominating an Obama hugger.” Yet in his most recent column, Dionne writes:

Memo to Democrats: You will be defined by President Obama whether you like it or not, so you might as well embrace him for the benefits he can bring you…  the trajectory in both Virginia and New Jersey sends a message to many moderate congressional Democrats worried about the 2010 elections: Whatever problems Obama may cause them, they almost certainly can ‘ t win without him

In the span of less than six months, then, Dionne has gone from telling Republican they need to nominate an “Obama hugger” to explaining to moderate Democrats why they shouldn’t abandon Barack Obama, despite “whatever problems Obama may cause them.”

Mr. Dionne — whose distaste for Republicans and conservatives is evident in almost every column — cannot kick his habit of instructing them about the dangers of “doctrinal purity.” But for him, like so many other Obama supporters, the cockiness is gone, the fear is a’risin’, all before the Virginia gubernatorial election (where Democrat Creigh Deeds is down by double digits in the polls) has even occurred. The task now facing liberals like Dionne is to get moderate Democrats to be “Obama huggers” — or at least not to become Obama critics.

The times they are a-changin‘.

In a story in the British paper the Independent, we find this nugget:

“Obama has created an atmosphere of no fear,” Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and political biographer, told the National Journal. “Nobody is really worried about the revenge of Barack Obama, because he is not a vengeful man. That’s what we love about him; he is so high-minded, and a conciliatory guy, and he tries to govern with a sense of consensus – all noble goals, but they don’t get you very far in this Washington knifing environment.”

Exactly what planet is Professor Brinkley living on? The person he describes was Candidate Obama. But President Obama — you know, the one who targets news networks, the Chamber of Commerce, insurance companies, and people attending town-hall meetings; the Obama who accuses his critics of being liars; the Obama who is trying to ram through one of the largest pieces of legislation in American history without a single Republican vote and after having done virtually no outreach — is a very different person.

The curtain has been pulled back on the supposedly high-minded and noble Mr. Obama. The game is up. And the reality is that he is one of the most partisan and divisive figures we have seen, even as he tries from time to time to reach back to unifying rhetoric — rhetoric that has grown old and stale. His White House — led by Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Anita Dunn, and Robert Gibbs — is also showing a propensity to bring knives and clubs and guns to Washington’s political skirmishes. They are pulling down rather than elevating our politics. That should be obvious to anyone paying attention, to anyone not blinded by ideology. Which perhaps explains Professor Brinkley’s silly comments.

President Obama visited Dover Air Force Base early this morning and met with some of the families of the fallen. It was a dignified and appropriate act by the president. And I know from the experience of George W. Bush, who met with hundreds of family members over the course of his presidency, that it is an emotionally wrenching one as well, though nothing compared with what the families themselves suffer. In watching this, one is reminded of the awful costs of war — and of the unique place the president plays in our national life.

Barack Obama did the right thing in the right way, and he deserves credit for it.

In his column today, Richard Cohen — in a column about General Stanley McChrystal, Afghanistan, and (of course) Vietnam — repeats an oft-made assertion:

The other thing I know about generals is that they do not ask for less — less equipment or less personnel. They ask for more, just as Westmoreland did in Vietnam before reality — otherwise known as domestic politics — forced Lyndon Johnson to rein him in.

This claim is demonstrably false. I can name several generals who did not ask for more troops — beginning with General George Casey Jr. in Iraq in 2006. (In Bob Woodward’s book The War Within, we read about this exchange between General Casey, then the commanding general in Iraq: “I’m with you,” [Casey] replied [to President Bush]. “I understand that [the need to win the war]. But to win, we have to draw down.”)

This was the period when President Bush was pushing for the “surge” — which included an additional 20,000-plus troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. General Casey, along with several others, opposed the surge in favor of a “light footprint” — as did most of the top military-brass in the Pentagon. In fact, it took a joint appearance by President Bush and Vice President Cheney at the Pentagon, in December 2006, to convince them of the wisdom in moving forward with the surge.

It’s largely forgotten now, but when then Lieut. General David Petraeus was arguing, along with retired General Jack Keane and others, for deploying at least five additional brigades to Iraq, they encountered enormous opposition — opposition that was thankfully overcome.

So generals sometimes don’t ask for more; sometimes they ask for less. The fact that Cohen doesn’t know this and would still write a column on this topic is a reminder that commentators often don’t let inconvenient facts get in the way of their arguments. The Vietnam War can still be instructive, but those who obsess over it and who reduce every war or situation we face in war to a Vietnam redux are doing us a disservice.

I have argued before that the tone and manner in which one practices politics are undervalued commodities, especially at a presidential level. The public looks for leaders who are large-minded rather than petty and peevish, who engage in public arguments rather than in personal attacks, who want to solve problems rather than settle scores. Tone and approach are important not simply for the aesthetics of politics but also because of what they reveal about a person’s predisposition and attitude, temperament and spirit. …

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The most recent data from Gallup is quite interesting. Among the findings:

In Gallup Daily tracking that spans Barack Obama’s third quarter in office (July 20 through Oct. 19), the president averaged a 53% job approval rating. That is down sharply from his prior quarterly averages, which were both above 60%. In fact, the 9-point drop in the most recent quarter is the largest Gallup ever measured for an elected president between the second and third quarters of his term, dating back to 1953. … More generally, Obama’s 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office. … In Obama’s first quarter and second quarter, his job approval average compared favorably with those of prior presidents. But after the drop in his support during the last quarter, his average now ranks near the bottom for presidents at similar points in their presidencies. Only Clinton had a lower third-quarter average among elected presidents. … Obama’s 53% third-quarter average is substandard from a broader historical perspective that encompasses all 255 presidential quarters for which Gallup has data going back to 1945. On this basis, Obama’s most recent average ranks 144th, or in the 44th percentile, clearly below average not just for presidents’ third quarters but for all presidents. [emphasis added]

There are, I think, several conclusions we can draw from this survey. Read the rest of this entry »

The exchange that Jake Tapper of ABC News had with Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, was significant because of the locution used by Tapper. Several commentators have criticized the White House for going to war with Fox News — but essentially on utilitarian grounds (it won’t works, it looks petty, it will backfire, et cetera). What Tapper said was this:

It hasn’t escaped our notice that in the last few weeks the White House has decided to declare war on one of our sister organizations saying it’s not a news organization and tell the rest of the news media to not treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to say one of them is not a news organization and the rest of the media should not treat them like one?

The term “sister organizations” is important because it shows solidarity with a news organization under fierce attack by the White House. This is the kind of question one would hope to see when a president and his top aides target a news organization and then, for good measure, try to dictate to other news organizations what they should do, how they should act, and which stories they should follow. But so far, stunningly, the media — including the White House press corps — have mostly been quiescent. One might have expected more in the face of these extraordinary efforts at media intimidation and media control. If the situation were reversed, and a Republican White House were targeting an entire network in a similar fashion, criticisms, condemnations, and thundering editorials would be pouring forth; terms like “abuse of power” and “chilling effect” would be on the lips of virtually every reporter in America. Instead, the reaction has been, for the most part, uncomfortable silence (with a few, like Jacob Weisberg, siding with the White House).

What happened yesterday was an impressive display by Mr. Tapper, though not a particularly surprising one, given that he is one of the most impressive and independent journalists covering the Obama White House. But the fact that prior to Tapper’s comments the brazen attacks on Fox by Anita Dunn, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod generated “only a single, tangential question at the White House’s daily briefing for reporters,” in the words of the Politico’s Mike Allen, is an embarrassment and something of an indictment of contemporary journalism. As Allen points out, “The direct attacks, if leveled at another news outlet or by another White House might have aroused a torrent of criticism, but the flow of outrage from the Washington journalistic set has been more like a trickle.”

We know all about the political orientation of most reporters — but surely this is a case when political preferences should give way to professional responsibilities and priorities. Fox News may be the immediate target under attack, but so is journalism itself. Jake Tapper seems to understand that. The question is: Does anyone else in the press corps?

Jack Shafer has just published a fascinating behind-the-scenes article, “Barack and Anita Diss Roger Ailes.” Shafer, in writing about press coverage Obama deemed insufficiently favorable, writes this:

Obama’s hatred of the conservative press fully manifested itself when he became president and immediately assigned his communications director Anita Dunn to hammer the media in a series of remarks. But there is no denying his special animus for Fox, which he regards as overtly conservative in its news coverage.

“He was convinced that Fox had it in for him,” Rahm Emanuel told Howard Kurtz for his new book, The War on Fox: The Obama White House v. a News Network. Emanuel professed not to know where Obama’s hatred came from but said whenever Fox broadcast an unfavorable story on him, he’d send e-mails prohibiting his people from talking to the network.

Obama and his people loved to make the political as personal as possible. A week after the Emanuel-Kurtz conversation, senior adviser David Axelrod warned Fox White House correspondent Major Garrett over the phone that Ailes would find his “ass in a sling” if Fox continued its negative coverage of Obama.

The account I just cited is mostly accurate, except that the original version — written by Jack Shafer for Slate in 2007 — was about Richard Nixon and his administration’s hatred for the Washington Post rather than about Barack Obama and his administration’s hatred for Fox News. The names of the key actors (and key parts of the human anatomy) have been changed — but the burning anger for and the bullying tactics aimed at a particular news organization have not.

The Obama administration has set out on an ugly and dangerous path, one we have been down before. It’s time for the Obama White House to take these words to heart:

I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. … As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, “We are not enemies, but friends … though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.”

So said Barack Obama on the night he was elected. They were wise words then; they are wise words now.