He means RELUCTANCE, not RETICENCE. This is a bit of illiteracy that really needs stamping out.
Geraghty is a douche. Just because people use the words freedom and liberty in speeches does not make them champions of those things. Look at GW Bush for example. He used those words a lot in his speeches. He gave us the DHS, TSA, NSA spying on Americans, TARP, the largest increase in welfare since 1965 up to this term, a massively bigger government and many other freedom killing things. I guess Geraghty thinks that as long as he mentioned freedom, the stuff he actually did does not matter? I do not know if Obama regularly uses those words in his speeches but it would not surprise me if he did.