The author is speaking for Richard Haase of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been outspoken in the past about the administration's failures in managing foreign policy. New York has decided to become proactive in this area. Obama is being given an ultimatum.
I bet it falls on large deaf ears.
Oh oh. He’s doing more harm then good for the Democrat Party. Next, they’ll be trying to get him to ride in an open car.
Well, with Bambi usurping the other branches of government, why don’t the other branches usurp usual executive functions, such as Boehner or Scalia should have gone to Paris and represented the USA?
bfl
He still has almost two years to really mess up America then to go on to the UN as a rep.
My main quibbles with the article:
The “Wise men” group is a bit long in the tooth, and Kissinger is not exactly an America-Firster.
And Gelb refers to Obama as a “first-rate as an intellectual thinker”, which is the opposite of true. Whenever Obama has gone into something off-script, he’s invariably been confused, scatterbrained, and nigh-incoherent, as no true intellectual would be when asked to speak off-the-cuff.
“The must-gos include National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, chief speech writer/adviser Ben Rhodes, and foreign policy guru without portfolio Valerie Jarrett.”
The last clause is what this article is really about.
Obama can’t decide much, unless it’s what time to tee off.
Thanks for posting this story. For Leslie Gelb to so thoroughly destroy the Obama administration should have Dear Leader in a panic. Mr. Gelb has great courage to publish this, and I presume he wanted to start building pressure for change. He can look to Bob Woodward to learn his fate.
Gelb’s forthright statement that Obama must immediately replace almost his entire administration (even his personal handler Valerie Jarrett) with competent, experienced advisors is accurate, and his proposal of specific names and solutions laudable. Gelb even acknowledges that Obama is the biggest obstacle to improvement. But he never makes the case for how this could ever happen.
Besides the fact that his foreign policy goal is to undermine the capitalist, post-colonial powers, Obama’s ego requires that he preside over a court of fourth-rate jesters, in an echo chamber. No way he is going to admit his entire administration is rotten from Barack to core and replace it. Nor will he do the right thing: force Biden to resign, appoint a competent VP, then resign himself.
Everyone is, of course, ignoring the possibility that Obama intentionally did not intend, perhaps that his sympathies were with not the French but with the radical islamists.
I was serving last night and came across Anderson Cooper on Letterman. Cooper made a snide remark about Obama not being in Paris and I thought Letterman was going to start crying.
Yes, I am in a thousand yard stare after reading this and knowing Mr. Gelb. He is right, we are in for a heap of trouble.