Leaderless

National Journal ^ | 11/26/2015 | Ron Fournier

[HomerBohn]

I once asked, What if Obama cant lead? The answer after Paris is painful

In his mem­oir, Le­on Pan­etta ar­gued that for all of Barack Obama's strengths, he is miss­ing an es­sen­tial in­gredi­ent of lead­er­ship. He lacks "fire," wrote Obama's former CIA dir­ect­or and Pentagon chief. "The pres­id­ent re­lies on the lo­gic of a law pro­fess­or rather than the pas­sion of a lead­er."

Obama has proved Pan­etta right again and again dur­ing his pres­id­ency, but nev­er more dan­ger­ously so than with his shoulder-shrug ap­proach to IS­IS. Obama called it a "J.V. team" be­fore it star­ted be­head­ing Amer­ic­ans. He said it was "con­tained" be­fore it at­tacked Par­is. Now he's call­ing it "a bunch of killers with good so­cial me­dia."

That's how you de­scribe a street gang--a bunch of killers with good so­cial me­dia. The Is­lam­ic State is no street gang.

Ob­ject­ive ob­serv­ers from across the polit­ic­al spec­trum took ex­cep­tion to Obama's tone. This from Frank Bruni, a lib­er­al-minded New York Times colum­nist:

He was at his worst just after the Par­is at­tacks, when he com­mu­nic­ated as much ir­rit­a­tion with the second-guess­ing of his stew­ard­ship as he did out­rage over Par­is and de­term­in­a­tion to des­troy the Is­lam­ic State, or IS­IS.

He owed us something dif­fer­ent, something more. He'd just said, the day be­fore Par­is, that IS­IS was con­tained and that it was weak­en­ing, so there was an onus on him to make abund­antly clear that he grasped the mag­nitude of the threat and was in­tensely fo­cused on it.

From Obama we needed fire. In­stead we got em­bers, along with the un-pres­id­en­tial por­tray­al of Re­pub­lic­ans as sniv­el­ing wimps whose fears about refugees were akin to their com­plaints about tough de­bate ques­tions.

There it is again--"from Obama we needed fire."

The man who so aptly dia­gnosed Obama's ton­al weak­ness, Le­on Pan­etta, ap­peared on Meet the Press on Sunday to de­mand more lead­er­ship against IS­IS. This time, he stuck to sub­stance--and was no less dev­ast­at­ing.

"I think the U.S. has to lead in this ef­fort be­cause what we've learned a long time ago is that if the United States does not lead, nobody else will," Pan­etta said. He blamed Obama for un­der-serving his prom­ise to dis­rupt and de­feat IS­IS. "I think that the re­sources ap­plied to that mis­sion, frankly, have not been suf­fi­cient to con­front that."

Pan­etta is not alone among Demo­crats wor­ried about Obama's ap­proach. Lead­ing Demo­crat­ic Sen­at­or Di­anne Fein­stein told Face the Na­tion that the United States is not do­ing enough to fight the Is­lam­ic State.

"We need to be ag­gress­ive," she said. "Now." inst IS­IS would re­quire shared sac­ri­fice. I am sym­path­et­ic to the fact that Obama faces no easy op­tions after in­her­it­ing Pres­id­ent Bush's ill-con­ceived war in Ir­aq. And I've got ab­so­lutely no pa­tience for the GOP pres­id­en­tial field's hy­per­bol­ic, dis­hon­est, and big­oted rhet­or­ic.

But there is only one com­mand­er-in-chief, and ours is stub­bornly cling­ing to a strategy against IS­IS that lacks clar­ity, cre­ativ­ity, and ur­gency. There is only one pres­id­ent, and ours doesn't seem to know how to rally us to a com­mon cause.

Look at this Twit­ter feed from Ron Klain, a lead­ing Demo­crat­ic con­sult­ant who served as Obama's Ebola czar. He re­calls the ir­ra­tion­al, polit­ic­ally charged calls to close U.S. bor­ders to people from na­tions stricken by the dis­ease--a pan­ic not un­like the one over Syr­i­an refugees today. "Ebola ex­per­i­ence of­fers three les­sons for man­aging fears," Klain writes.

1. Ac­know­ledge and ad­dress the pub­lic's fear. Don't dis­miss it as il­le­git­im­ate. "That only ex­acer­bates fears and fuels doubts about lead­ers' candor."

2. Ex­plain the dangers of "giv­ing in­to fears." In­ac­tion is ris­ki­er than ac­tion.

3. "Show that gov­ern­ment has a plan to man­age the risk--not ig­nor­ing the risk, but tak­ing act­ive, ser­i­ous steps to re­duce it."

Klain didn't say this but I will: On IS­IS, Obama breaks every rule. He min­im­izes the threat and dis­misses our fears, which raises doubts about his candor and cap­ab­il­ity. An over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans dis­ap­prove of his hand­ling of IS­IS, a new poll shows, and 81 per­cent think IS­IS will strike the United States.

In Ju­ly 2013, six months in­to his second term, I wrote a column that ques­tioned wheth­er Obama would ful­fill his enorm­ous po­ten­tial, wheth­er he even cared any­more about his prom­ises to change Wash­ing­ton, wheth­er he could write the mod­ern rules of the pres­id­ency and build a new bully pul­pit. I asked, "What if Obama can't lead?"

I now have my an­swer.

[billyboy15]

Well errr...hurrumph!! Yes of course it is the 19th Amendment. I was merely TESTING freepers to see if they were as smart as I believed them to be....yeah that’s it, it was a test...and you PASSED!!

[billyboy15]

Sure, a minimum IQ score of say 80 would suffice to take the vote away from women anyway.

[Gritty]

This reminds me of what the Zeks often said in the Siberian camps, "If only Stalin knew what injustices were being done in his name...!"

[glennaro]

obama wasn’t any form of “law professor”, blown or otherwise. He was merely a “lecturer”. Most likely his grades were but mediocre and it is clear he lacked (and still lacks) the motivation and energy required to advance to a professor status (expecting, of course, that if his school really wanted him to be a professor they would have simply granted it to him because he is so “special”.)

[ETL]

Although I agree that it seems more women than men have that issue, there are plenty of women who do think perfectly sensibly, as evidenced here on FR. But most women do consistently vote democrat.

[billyboy15]

The numbers show that women in both elections voted overwhelmingly for Obama while men in both elections voted just the opposite.

[Pollster1]

He lacks "fire," wrote Obama's former CIA dir­ect­or and Pentagon chief. "The pres­id­ent re­lies on the lo­gic of a law pro­fess­or rather than the pas­sion of a lead­er."

To the extent that Obama "lacks fire", that is another reason why we should be thankful to God on this Thanksgiving Day. To deal with someone at Obama's level of evil who had all that malice and bigotry plus fire/energy would be too much. God, in His mercy, chose not to throw quite as much at us as he might have.

[jennings2004]

Why do I keep having visions of General Patton? May one like unto him arise from the present rubbish and provide leadership for our beloved Country!

[hattend]

Can’t read that without getting a headache.

[hattend]

Thanks!

[csvset]

The original post hurt my eyes.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

[DWar]

Panetta,and most others, have this totally wrong. The work of the Alinsky radical community organizer is to stir up trouble, create chaos, stay hidden and blame others, later appear as the problem solver with the solution which is always more government and, more power to the radicals. He is not incompetent. He is not a passionless law professor. He is simply the quintessential Alinsky accolite following that same pattern.

[HomerBohn]

All the patriotic general officers have been retired or removed by the parasitic Obama. What’s left are the political ass-kissers.

[hattend]

Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

You have a great Thanksgiving Day as well!

[Henry Hnyellar]

Panetta is a dope in the mold of his master Obama.

[Thank You Rush]

“”He owed us something dif­fer­ent, something more. He’d just said, the day be­fore Par­is, that IS­IS was con­tained and that it was weak­en­ing, so there was an onus on him to make abund­antly clear that he grasped the mag­nitude of the threat and was in­tensely fo­cused on it.””

INCLUDING an admission that he was WRONG again!!!! I think he should be waterboarded until he admits that he is a first class louse and capable of admitting mistakes; that he has often been proven wrong.

[Thank You Rush]

“”Where has Michelle Obama been?””

Good question. I haven’t seen “hide nor hair” of her - (not that I would want to) since she went to Indonesia or wherever weeks ago and while there a few pictures but no news when she returned. I was hoping she hadn’t!!!!

[nikos1121]

Interesting commentary on the radio this AM from an ARmenian from Russia who is now an American citizen. He summed it up perfectly....perfectly.

“If the USA took in 1 million Chinese it would be a better place. If it took it 1 million hindus, it would be a better place, but if it took in 1 million Muslims it would be a disaster for this country.”

[Thank You Rush]

““If the USA took in 1 million Chinese it would be a better place. If it took it 1 million hindus, it would be a better place, but if it took in 1 million Muslims it would be a disaster for this country.””

I like that - so very true!!!