On May 1, President Barack Obama went on national television to tell us all that Navy SEALs had invaded a mansion in Pakistan and killed the author of the 9/11 attacks. It was a rare kick-butt moment for our academic-in-chief, who was not used to having flag-wavers pump fists and shout “U-S-A!” about his doings, or getting the warm praise of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
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Nice job, Mr. President. As of now, you stand poised between the morass in Libya and the impressive success of the strike at Osama bin Laden, which almost makes you seem like two different people.
In Libya, you attempted to “lead from behind.” With bin Laden, you were all forward motion. In Libya, you were pushed into the fray by external parties and tried to seem overly reticent.
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Faced with a fork in the road, President Barack Obama and the Democrats have decided to take it, trying to do two things at once: Rekindle the glow of the 2008 rapture, and recapture the rage of the town halls a year later, and unleash it, this time for their side.
Phase one is not going brilliantly, as one can run on “hope” and “change” only once in one’s lifetime, and after that, change means voting oneself out of office.
Phase two — the hope that the Medicare-cutting plan a
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More than a few observers have noted that President Barack Obama regularly seems a few beats behind things; unable to anticipate what is developing and awkward when forced to catch up. When he responds, his answers seem lacking something.
Good politicians are in tune with their times, great ones foresee them. But Obama often seems out of step with his times.
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How would state Sen. Barack Obama have reacted to President Barack Obama’s decision to authorize a no-fly zone over Libya, taken with no debate and no authorization from Congress, a commitment that could in real life become open-ended and involve this country in a prolonged civil conflict?
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Picture a hand on the wheel of the great ship of state, pushing it hard in a certain direction, say, to the left. It belongs to the president. Picture 29 smaller hands on the other side of the wheel, trying as hard as they can to wrench it back in the other direction. They belong to Govs. Chris Christie, R-N.J., Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., Scott Walker, R-Wis., and 26 other Republican governors, 12 of them elected in 2009 and 2010.
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When the French monarchy offered its help in 1778 to the struggling American colonies, it was in every way far more oppressive than the British government from which they were trying to separate.This fact did not keep the American rebels from eagerly taking their aid — although they detested everything that France stood for then. (France’s interest, of course, was to weaken England, which the colonists all understood.)
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There are red states and blue states, and there are states of denial that liberals turn to when things do not go well.
How come their side was trounced in the 2010 election? Chris Matthews of “Hardball” offered his views:
“[The Republicans] won the argument because they made [Obama] look lefty … [they] blocked everything the president tried to do, and forced him to the left. Forced him to build left-wing or center-left coalitions without help from the center-right.”
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Anne Applebaum, a serious woman wed to the serious Radek Sikorski, and the author of a great book on the Soviet Gulag, is defending the court of President Obama against charges made by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Ginni Thomas, et al, that Obama and similar Ivy League babies represent an arrogant and unseemly elite.
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Perhaps the Democrats are starting to realize that pushing health care through on a procedural loophole against the vigorously expressed will of the people wasn't such a great idea after all.
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