Now this guy says he's willing to unilaterally invade a friendly country if he gets actionable information. That's a bit radical IMHO.
Posted on 08/01/2007 1:33:53 PM PDT by Jean S
Perhaps you’re suffering from “debate fatigue.” You hear a lot about it these days, with Democratic and Republican presidential candidates squaring off many months before the first primaries or caucuses.
Yes, it can be tiring. But please don’t succumb. For all the derision directed at them, presidential debates are useful exercises. And early debates are especially useful.
Early debates help us learn things about candidates that might have remained unnoticed until much later in the race. And sometimes those things are very important.
For example, in the four Democratic debates held so far, we have learned one crucial fact: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) isn’t anywhere near ready to be president.
Our Obama education started with the first debate, held in April in Orangeburg, S.C.
Moderator Brian Williams of NBC News asked how the candidates would respond militarily if two American cities were hit simultaneously by al Qaeda terrorists.
Obama was first to answer. He said we would want an “effective emergency response.” And “good intelligence.” And a policy that would not “alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast.”
The only thing he failed to mention was how he would respond militarily. As in, you know, fighting back.
Obama later tried to return to the question, but the damage had been done.
Front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) stepped in with a better idea. “I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate,” she said. After identifying the enemy, Clinton continued, “Let’s focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.”
After the debate, the Clinton campaign bragged that she had “demonstrated that she would know how to respond if the country was attacked.” Not like that other guy.
Now we’ve had another debate, last Monday night in Charleston, and Obama faced another question on international affairs.
A questioner speaking via YouTube video asked whether the candidates would “meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.”
Obama quickly said, “I would.”
Really? Would the first year of the Obama administration be filled with summits with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Assad, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il?
Apparently so. “The reason is that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding principle of this administration — is ridiculous,” Obama explained. “Ronald Reagan and Democratic presidents like JFK constantly spoke to the Soviet Union at a time when Ronald Reagan called them an evil empire.”
As in Orangeburg, Hillary Clinton stepped in with a dose of reality. She would make no such promises, she said, because “I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes.”
Anyone, other than Sen. Obama, knows that a handshake and a photo-op with the president of the United States would be a huge propaganda gift to the rogue-state dictators. And for what benefit to the United States national interest?
“Certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be,” Clinton added.
After the debate, Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod, tried to explain that Obama didn’t really say he would meet face-to-face, one-on-one with the rogue-state leaders.
“He said that he would be willing to talk,” Axelrod explained. “And what he meant was, as a government, he’d be willing and eager to initiate those kinds of talks, just as during the Cold War there were low-level discussions and mid-level discussions between us and the Soviet Union and so on. So he was not promising summits with all of those leaders.”
OK. But that’s not what I heard.
The next day, Clinton called Obama’s answer “naïve.” For his part, Obama tried to suggest that just a few months ago, Clinton had said the same thing that Obama said in Charleston. But it turns out she hadn’t.
All of this has come about as the result of early debates. And now, six months before the first primary and 15 months before the general election, we’ve learned that one major candidate is unquestionably unprepared to be president.
That’s worth a little debate fatigue.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
E-mail: byork@nationalreview.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .
God forbid that a dem becomes president but at least Hillary has some knowledge of foreign policy. This idiot doesn’t have a clue.
Note to Byron York: “Obomba” will never be ready.
Propagandists propping up an empty suit. You know you suck when an empty pantsuit makes you look pathetic.
Now this guy says he's willing to unilaterally invade a friendly country if he gets actionable information. That's a bit radical IMHO.
There's your problem right there: Carter was never a nuclear sub commander.
Nor was he a nuclear scientist.
But these fraudulent claims adorn his reputation to this day.
If Hillary is the nominee of the Dems, she will pick Obama as her VP. Obama will be the VP you will never see or hear. Hillary and Bill will make sure that he never gets access to a microphone during her administration. After 8 years, she will try to take credit for “grooming” Obama to be president. If you vote against him, you will be considered a racist for denying the most qualified black man in the United States. That is the game plan.
What the statements that York highlighted have indicated is just how in touch BHO is with the base of his party. People whose heart's raced with Howard Dean are now suffering heart attacks at the statements that BHO has made.
The nice thing is, if you go over to the DUmmies board, they generally admire Barry O for what he said. They’ve been looking for him to dust it up with Hillary, and he’s given them raw meat, well, raw vegetables (gotta cover the vegan angle!) with this. Hopefully, he will build enough moonbat support in the next few months to make Hillary really go medieval on his sorry butt!
Well, he was a star pupil in his law school and his puppet master (George Soros) will take care of the rest of the details. < / sarcasm >
Like I did to all the women who told of the dirty deviant deeds of my husband, Bill. Also, I'd review copies of the FBI files I gathered earlier and make them Republican bast@rds pay!
What do they think about his brilliant idea to send U.S. troops into Pakistan?
I just scanned the first two pages of their Latest Breaking News (I can’t use their ‘search’ function, you have to be a paying member, and I have my principles!) and didn’t see a word about it. It will eventually surface, and it will be interesting to see the spin used.
The empty suit gets the benefit of racial politics. He was raised by his white mother and white grandparents.
They omit that story for their own convenience. Double
standard as usual.
I try not to be a defeatist, but if any of these Dems get in the White House, it will be a defining moment where I will have to arm myself and teach my family how to shoot. “Aim small, miss small”.
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