Everybody Loves a Winner [ObamaCare may be important foreign policy achievement](Huh?)

The New York Times ^ | April 20, 2010 | Thomas L. Friedman

[2ndDivisionVet]

I’ve been thinking about President Obama’s foreign policy lately, but first, a golf tip: I went to Dave Pelz’s famous short-game school this winter to improve my putting and chipping, and a funny thing happened — my long game got better. It brings to mind something that happened to Obama. The president got health care reform passed, and it may turn out to be his single most important foreign policy achievement.

In politics and diplomacy, success breeds authority and authority breeds more success. No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

Have no illusions, the rest of the world was watching our health care debate very closely, waiting to see who would be the strong horse — Obama or his Democratic and Republican health care opponents? At every turn in the debate, America’s enemies and rivals were gauging what the outcome might mean for their own ability to push around an untested U.S. president.

It remains to be seen whether, in the long run, America will be made physically healthier by the bill’s passage. But, in the short run, Obama definitely was made geopolitically healthier.(continued)

[2ndDivisionVet]

Have they lost their minds?

[HarleyD]

Their “minds” were lost a long time ago.

[autumnraine]

Good Lord, they were really on their knees for this one.

[Ulysse]

oSSama bin Ladin is good reference for the NYT and Obama

[Bluebird Singing]

Really twisted thinking. Friedman is trying too hard.

Hitler and Stalin were winners, too. Everybody loves a winner.

[FrankR]

[Reeses]

No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden:

Fond flattery for a terrorist that killed thousands of NYC people? Terrorists see a weak horse in Obama and will nuke NYC, and New Yorkers know it.

[1010RD]

Thomas Friedman is a sap.

[DrC]

Friedman apparently forgets that while Americans applaud a winner, the fates of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Marion Jones suggest they are less impressed by those who achieve their feats by breaking or bending the rules. Dictators, mob bosses and other thugs tend to be far less discriminating in their admiration for winners.

Friedman also conveniently ignores it was Nancy Pelosi’s pressure/prodding/nagging that was instrumental in pushing Obama to override the instincts of Rahm Emanuel to settle for a far less ambitious incremental version of health reform and to instead adopt the far riskier “all in” gamble that was taken. And it was Nancy Pelosi, not Barack Obama, who secured the votes needed for passage in the House. This reality, in conjunction with Obama’s repeated bowing and scraping before foreign leaders and the obvious disrespect he has been accorded by enemies and allies alike suggest that it is a wiener, not a winner, who now occupies the Oval Office. And even Tom Friedman should know that no one likes a wiener.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Filing this in ...
Obama’s Outstanding Record of Dip-lunacy [and leftist dip-lunacy too]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2470815/posts

Also updating Monster Ping
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2496737/posts?page=1

[CoastWatcher]

So when obama health care denial plan is repealed it will be a foreign affair embarrassment as well.

[Smokin' Joe]

Much of the world admires a 'strong leader'. Russians revere Stalin, who 'saved' the Rodina, Arab nations admire the man who will use force to achieve his ends, Latin America, Machismo, etc.

Having stuffed through a measure over the objections of his people makes him a 'summbody' in many not so envious countries, much to our chagrin. Such adulation is the stuff Hitlers are made of.