Obama’s foreign policy: Dealing from a position of strength
By David Ignatius, WashPost, Published: May 10
President Obama begins his reelection campaign with something almost nobody would have predicted four years ago: a sense of success and political advantage in the foreign-policy areas that have often spelled trouble for Democrats.
The tight, wary control that was often apparent when Obama discussed foreign policy in his first two years has been replaced by an easier informality. The pre-scripted phrases and the gaze into the middle distance, as if he were reading a teleprompter, are mostly gone, too, at least in private, aides say.
He conveys the sense that managing foreign policy is an iterative skill, which he has learned through trial and error. This former antiwar activist and community organizer certainly didn’t run for president so that he would have the authority to kill people. But that’s just what he does every time he authorizes a drone strike against an al-Qaeda target.
The Obama team seems almost dismissive of the foreign-policy savvy of his likely Republican rival, Mitt Romney. They see Romney as out of his depth on this subject, making gestures to his neoconservative supporters and talking tough, no matter the issue — almost in a caricature of the chest-beating unilateralist.
(More here.)
President Obama begins his reelection campaign with something almost nobody would have predicted four years ago: a sense of success and political advantage in the foreign-policy areas that have often spelled trouble for Democrats.
The tight, wary control that was often apparent when Obama discussed foreign policy in his first two years has been replaced by an easier informality. The pre-scripted phrases and the gaze into the middle distance, as if he were reading a teleprompter, are mostly gone, too, at least in private, aides say.
He conveys the sense that managing foreign policy is an iterative skill, which he has learned through trial and error. This former antiwar activist and community organizer certainly didn’t run for president so that he would have the authority to kill people. But that’s just what he does every time he authorizes a drone strike against an al-Qaeda target.
The Obama team seems almost dismissive of the foreign-policy savvy of his likely Republican rival, Mitt Romney. They see Romney as out of his depth on this subject, making gestures to his neoconservative supporters and talking tough, no matter the issue — almost in a caricature of the chest-beating unilateralist.
(More here.)
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