Posted on 04/30/2009 4:53:35 AM PDT by Tolik
In matters of foreign policy during the president’s first 100 days, we have seen two Barack Obamas.
Consider “Obama I.” After taking office, the president gave his first interview to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV station, and listed various sins of America while praising the Saudi king as courageous.
On trips abroad since then, Obama I has continued to apologize for the U.S. being arrogant and dismissive of Europe. He thinks we have been inconsiderate to Mexico. And, judging by a speech he gave in Prague, we apparently carry a special burden to eliminate nuclear weapons since we ended World War II by using them.
Obama I seems far kinder to our rivals than to the prior Bush administration when he assures various South American thugs and Iranian and Russian strongmen that he represents a sharp break from a recent, unfortunate American past.
Obama I sat quietly for nearly an hour while Nicaragua’s thuggish leader, Daniel Ortega, trashed the U.S. at the recent Summit of the Americas. Instead of defending his country, the president, in his call to move forward, replied that he was only three months old at the time of our alleged misdeeds in Cuba — and therefore not responsible for them.
Most maddening, Obama I released classified memos about past enhanced interrogation techniques — over the objections of former CIA directors from both parties.
But there has been another Obama as well. This more centrist “Obama II” kept Bush appointee Robert Gates as secretary of Defense. He named no-nonsense Gen. James Jones national-security adviser.
Most of the campaign rhetoric about leaving Iraq on a strict timetable has been scrapped. Instead, the Bush-Petraeus plan of withdrawal based on conditions on the ground continues.
Obama sent more combat troops to Afghanistan, while trying in vain to get the Europeans to fulfill their NATO obligations by doing the same. Despite the hostile anti-Bush rhetoric, Obama has kept intact many of his predecessor’s homeland-security measures. There has been little change with the Patriot Act, wiretap and e-mail intercepts of suspected terrorist communications, and renditions of overseas suspects.
Obama II gave the green light to execute suspected Somali pirates who were holding an American hostage. And in the case of our continued Predator drone attacks in Pakistan, such bombings are a little more extreme than waterboarding known terrorists.
There could be several explanations for our split-personality president.
One, Barack Obama has never before had to make tough decisions as an executive. He may be struggling to pacify both radicals in his base who detest past Bush policies and realists who warn him that al-Qaeda is still trying to repeat 9/11.
Or, two, Obama may be sincerely trying to move the country far to the left. His serial apologies may reveal a true post-national Obama. Once he consolidates power in the coming year, we may see the president’s moderate fig leaf blow away.
Or, three, Obama may be a Clinton-style realist, as his selection of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of State would suggest. He may be deliberately saying one thing abroad while pursuing quite another — in the manner of his calibrated campaign flip-flops on everything from campaign financing to NAFTA.
This more Machiavellian Obama in theory could advance roughly the same bipartisan foreign agenda as previous Presidents Clinton and Bush. Both sought to spread capitalism and democracy abroad to lessen the chances of regional conflicts, and were not so averse to using force to remove genocidal tyrants like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
In this scenario, Obama apologizes abroad and trumpets his nontraditional background and Islamic familiarities as clever ways to preempt and nullify third-world cheap shots taken against the U.S. Given his popularity with the global masses, the new, more effective Messenger Obama could send America’s largely unchanged message directly to the people.
So which Obama persona is the real president — Obama I, more radical than Jimmy Carter, or Obama II, a smoother centrist than Bill Clinton? I don’t think Obama himself quite knows — and that’s quite scary, as we don’t know either what to expect next.
If one would pay close attention, you’ll not be seeing a smooth orator behind that podium. You’ll see a gaffing, communist traitor.
Nah. Nobody out-slicks Slick Willie in the charm department. ;)
Obama is getting his cage rattled and he is showing signs of fear, he is facing a growing public display of protests such as the Tea Parties, he fears it by trying to discredit and minimalize its efforts.
Obama is like the bad boss at the end of a video game, you have to hit him with all you have over and over before the game is won.
Let me know if you want in or out.
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If I were Hanson, I wouldn’t waste a lot of fancy words on a pretty simple character. This is a guy that complacently soaked up the wisdom of Rev. Wright for years. Which explains everything.
The radical leftist.
That is obvious to anyone who isn't too afraid or blind to see.
He uses a combination of astroturfing which he gets daily from Axelrod, Totus I, who perfected the concept which constantly tries to create images of a popular movement using media or other paid shills where no truth lies.
In addition he has stolen the Clintons need to triangulate,or be on all sides of any issue that might even tend to be controversial.
The result, with all the support he gets from the drivebys, gives him the potential to wreak havoc for at least his first year in office.
After that even the dumbest of the dumb will have figured him out.
The notion that Hillary is centrist is laughable. She is front man at State for unadulterated Marxism.
“After that even the dumbest of the dumb will have figured him out.”
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You must be a member of the Optimist Club.
From last night’s “All-Stars.”
On President Obama’s first 100 days:
I think it hasn't been the most important 100 days. I think it has been the most revealing 100 days in our lifetime. After all, this man when he was elected was one of the great mysteries of American politics. He was the most unknown, untested, untried, and really un-figured-out man ever to ascend to the office.
And in the first 100 days, he has told us who he is. And before his inauguration there was a big debate. Is he a centrist who talks a good centrist game, or is he a leftist who talks a good centrist game? Now we know.
He is a man who has expressed in the joint address to congress, in the budget, and again in the speech he gave to Georgetown a few weeks ago, a radical domestic agenda which involves, as he puts it every time, a holy trinity of healthcare reform, by which he means nationalizing healthcare, and he wants to federalize education with essentially a federal guarantee of college education, and to seize control of the energy economy with a carbon tax.
And this is all in the service of leveling the differences between rich and poor and leveling the differences between classes.
That's as radical an agenda since FDR, and I think even more so, since FDR entered office willing to experiment. Obama knows where he wants to go to establish more social democratic America, and he has told us exactly what it is in the first 100 days.
BTTT
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