A president without a doctrine
By Richard Cohen,
WashPost
Monday, April 11, 7:21 PM
Nine days after Barack Obama launched his wee war in Libya, he went on television to tell the American people why he had done so. Not quite a week after congressional Republicans thumped the president by excising more money from his budget than he said he’d allow, the president will present his plan for dealing with the deficit. The cliche of late has been the trope about “getting ahead of history.” Wonderful. I would settle for Obama just catching up with himself.
The military action in Libya is a case in point. The president had ample reason to intervene. Moammar Gaddafi is a monster and there was little question that if he prevailed he would make his enemies, down to their children, suffer. This was an easy argument to make — one buttressed by Gaddafi’s own record as a sponsor of terrorism, the Lockerbie bombing above all — and dramatically abetted by the wild look in his eye. The situation called for a presidential speech.
First, though, Obama had to go to Latin America. It says something about this president — something good as well as bad — that plenty of people suspected he went through with the trip because he had promised his wife and kids that he would do so. Whatever the case — and the trip lacked any urgency whatsoever — it was not until his return that the president told the nation why we are, in a modest way, at war in Libya. The speech was a good one, a nice but hardly moving tutorial about American values and obligations, but it came too late. Within no time at all, the war had been lateraled to NATO, the rebels’ momentum had stalled, and Obama had essentially cleansed his hands of the matter. Libya may now be in for a protracted civil war. Obama botched this one.
Something similar happened with the budget fight. This is a tenacious battle but not a complicated issue. The debt is unmanageable and something has to be done. But the economy is fragile, unemployment still high and the housing market a sorry mess. So the thing to do is not monkey with the economy by cutting federal outlays at the moment but to come up with a long-range plan.
(More here.)
WashPost
Monday, April 11, 7:21 PM
Nine days after Barack Obama launched his wee war in Libya, he went on television to tell the American people why he had done so. Not quite a week after congressional Republicans thumped the president by excising more money from his budget than he said he’d allow, the president will present his plan for dealing with the deficit. The cliche of late has been the trope about “getting ahead of history.” Wonderful. I would settle for Obama just catching up with himself.
The military action in Libya is a case in point. The president had ample reason to intervene. Moammar Gaddafi is a monster and there was little question that if he prevailed he would make his enemies, down to their children, suffer. This was an easy argument to make — one buttressed by Gaddafi’s own record as a sponsor of terrorism, the Lockerbie bombing above all — and dramatically abetted by the wild look in his eye. The situation called for a presidential speech.
First, though, Obama had to go to Latin America. It says something about this president — something good as well as bad — that plenty of people suspected he went through with the trip because he had promised his wife and kids that he would do so. Whatever the case — and the trip lacked any urgency whatsoever — it was not until his return that the president told the nation why we are, in a modest way, at war in Libya. The speech was a good one, a nice but hardly moving tutorial about American values and obligations, but it came too late. Within no time at all, the war had been lateraled to NATO, the rebels’ momentum had stalled, and Obama had essentially cleansed his hands of the matter. Libya may now be in for a protracted civil war. Obama botched this one.
Something similar happened with the budget fight. This is a tenacious battle but not a complicated issue. The debt is unmanageable and something has to be done. But the economy is fragile, unemployment still high and the housing market a sorry mess. So the thing to do is not monkey with the economy by cutting federal outlays at the moment but to come up with a long-range plan.
(More here.)
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