We’ve been so focused on Obama’s domestic decisions and their terrible effects that it’s easy to forget how bad his foreign policy has been. But Charles Krauthammer is determined to make us remember what he refers to as “the depths of Obama’s naé¯ve universalism.”
Is Holder about to be tossed?
In this post’s comment thread there was a discussion of whether President Obama is making some room under that crowded bus for his Attorney General Eric Holder. Jennifer Rubin has written a piece speculating that this might indeed be the case, citing the fact that Rahm Emanuel has gone on record as distancing himself from the controversial decisions made by Holder in the KSM trial and the Christmas bomber interrogations.
In my post on the subject, I wrote “Holder is a proxy for Obama himself.” Commenter “RickZ” responded:
No offense, neo, but every presidential cabinet appointment is a proxy for the President himself, that’s the nature of the beast at these rarefied positions.
So I would like to clarify: by using the word “proxy” in Holder’s case, I meant something different than the usual Cabinet appointee, the usual presidential representative. I could be wrong about this, but my gut senses a close identification between Obama and Holder, an almost-Vulcan-mind-meld between them on the legal issues involved in fighting terrorism. This is not a compliment to either man; I think both are sadly misguided.
Holder serves a purpose for Obama. If there is an issue on which the President is somewhat loathe to express his opinion fully, perhaps because he knows it will be unpopular or controversial, I believe that Obama purposely uses Holder as cover, to draw the opposition’s criticism and deflect it from himself.
Perhaps the proper word for the relationship might be “surrogate” or “mouthpiece.” This is not to say that Holder does not have opinions of his own. I am not claiming he is a puppet. But his opinions are so closely in sync with Obama’s on these issues that for all intents and purposes they are one.
For this reason, I disagree strongly with those who think Holder is about to go. I suppose Obama might sacrifice him if it becomes necessary for strategic reasons (after all, he’s been known to do such a thing). If the decisions they both support because so unpopular Obama feels the need to disassociate himself from Holder and use him as scapegoat, it will happen. But this would only occur in the most extreme of situations, because Obama is so wedded to these views himself, and they are completely integral to his own attitude about the legal status and treatment of terrorists.
Holder is also no ordinary Cabinet appointee for Obama. They have known each other since 2004, the year Obama first achieved a national profile. The two met at “a dinner party hosted by former White House aide Anne Walker Marchange, niece of Clinton friend Vernon Jordan.” Very soon after declaring himself a candidate in early 2007, Obama requested that Holder be part of his campaign, and “Holder served as a legal adviser and strategist and led Obama’s vice presidential search committee.”
Holder is a trusted adviser and member of Obama’s inner circle. It probably doesn’t hurt, either, that Holder is a graduate of Columbia and a former basketball player, much like Obama. But it’s their common attitude towards law that creates the strongest bond between the men. As Holder says, “We are on the same page.”
And I don’t think Obama is eager to turn that page.
Okay, Superbowl thread!
I don’t care about football. But I’ve got the TV on as I work, and if I’m rooting for anyone, it’s for the Saints, because I like underdogs.
But it’s the ads that interest me. The theme: manhood, with a few subthemes. It seems men need to assert themselves against the crush of domesticity—with special soaps made just for them, and special cars, too. And don’t forget the underwear! Lots of underwear!
So, you football fans—and you know who you are—here’s your thread.
Narcissism, thy name is Obama
Two links for your perusal: this and this.
Perhaps you will agree with me that they are very, very disturbing. It has always been clear that Obama has an unusual amount of egotism, even for a politician. But these incidents are evidence that his narcissism may be growing, if such a thing be possible.
There’s a key in the article at that first link as to why this might be happening: as president, he is now surrounded by “nothing but Obama fans.” Of course, that’s been true for most of Obama’s life.
The second link shows not only Obama’s narcissism, but his lack of awareness that it is extremely bad form to display it so nakedly. This particular narcissist has no idea how narcissistic—and downright weird—he has come to sound.
Disturbing. Disturbing. Disturbing.
After reading both articles, I recalled the imperial stage set Obama had designed for his nomination acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Stadium.
As time goes on, the pieces of the Obama puzzle fit together to form a picture that becomes ever clearer. It also becomes more evident that Obama knew what he was about all along. Very few of his actions were random or spontaneous, but instead were carefully calculated to convey the impression of his august eminence, and to induce an attitude of veneration in his supporters. It worked—for a while.
The fact that things haven’t been going that well for Obama lately has done nothing to reduce his narcissism. That’s the way it usually is with narcissists. When they meet with obstacles, they tend to look not inward but outward at others to blame. And being surrounded by sycophants does nothing to stop this tendency.
How far will it go? That stage set in Denver made me think about classical history, specifically Rome, and even more specifically Caligula, who became convinced he was a god:
In AD 40…Caligula began appearing in public dressed as various gods and demigods such as Hercules, Mercury, Venus and Apollo. Reportedly, he began referring to himself as a god when meeting with politicians and he was referred to as Jupiter on occasion in public documents…The Temple of Castor and Pollux on the Forum was linked directly to the Imperial residence on the Palatine and dedicated to Caligula. He would appear here on occasion and present himself as a god to the public. Caligula also had several god statue’s heads removed and replaced with his own in various temples.
I’m not saying it will come to pass in exactly that way, and that Obama will declare himself to be a deity. In fact, I’ll even go on record as saying he won’t. Nevertheless, something is very wrong with this man, and it is growing stronger every day.
Emanual vs. Holder: it’s on Eric!
Jane Mayer’s puff piece on Eric Holder appeared recently in the New Yorker. Anyone who reads blogs or periodicals on the right, and who has followed the controversies involving Holder’s decisions about the KSM trial and the Christmas bomber—especially Andrew McCarthy’s various dissections of Holder’s positions on dealing with terrorists—can easily recognize that Mayer has given Holder a platform to say his piece without much challenge.
But fisking her article does not especially interest me at the moment. What does interest me are two points I gleaned from reading it. The first is the following, which comes as no surprise whatsoever, and which I have long believed to be the truth:
[Holder said] “The decisions are, relatively, mine. I take responsibility for them. But these are things where [Obama] is kept in the loop, and the direction he gives obviously has to be factored into any decision I make.” Holder declined to reveal details of their recent discussion but said, “We are on the same page.”
Holder is not exactly Obama’s puppet, but it has been clear for some time that they are in substantial and basic agreement on reinstating the pre-9/11 approach to terrorism. They probably don’t even have to confer on every little detail; they both know what they intend.
Here’s the other point that especially interested—and in this case somewhat surprised—me: when Holder sought to investigate “whether the C.I.A. had obstructed justice when it destroyed videotapes documenting waterboarding sessions,” and to “determine whether the agency’s abuse of detainees had itself violated laws,” Rahm Emanuel was against it. He “worried that such investigations would alienate the intelligence community.”
I’m surprised that any of Obama’s advisers showed such sense. Emanuel was overruled, but he did try to fight Holder on this, which is to his credit.
Mayer keeps talking about the fact that Holder is a lawyer and Emanuel is not, as though that makes the former automatically correct and the latter wrong. Emanuel fought Holder on another question—the venue for the KSM trial (and note Mayer’s need to insert the obligatory “who is not a lawyer” after Emanuel’s name in the following excerpt):
At the White House, Emanuel, who is not a lawyer, opposed Holder’s position on the 9/11 cases. He argued that the Administration needed the support of key Republicans to help close Guanté¡namo, and that a fight over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed could alienate them…“Rahm felt very, very strongly that it was a mistake to prosecute the 9/11 people in the federal courts, and that it was picking an unnecessary fight with the military-commission people,” [an] informed source said. “Rahm had a good relationship with Graham, and believed Graham when he said that if you don’t prosecute these people in military commissions I won’t support the closing of Guanté¡namo. . . . Rahm said, ”˜If we don’t have Graham, we can’t close Guanté¡namo, and it’s on Eric!’ ”
Again, I’m surprised that Emanuel showed that much sense (although I’m not surprised that Mayer managed to write her entire 7,600-word article without mentioning Holder’s embarrassing and incompetent question-and-answer session at Graham’s hands). But note that—at least, as far as the information in the article goes—Enamuel’s protest of Holder’s decision on KSM was not based on anything as noble as considerations of law, justice, protection of the city of New York, or anything else connected with what might be considered principle. It was purely strategic and political: Guantanamo needed to be closed, and if the administration went ahead with the New York KSM trial, it would be alienating the political support required to do so.
It’s sad that politics was behind Emanuel’s objections. But at least he had them. It’s also sad that he didn’t win the argument, and that Holder was allowed to prevail in this, as in so many other decisions. But Holder is a proxy for Obama himself.
It’s the independents, stupid
Obama’s support is dropping among the independents of New Hampshire. This has become a general trend for Obama; the Scott Brown election polls and results showed the same precipitous decline among independents in Massachusetts, whose swing from Democratic to Republican accounted for much of his margin of victory in a state that went heavily for Obama just one year ago. This change not only is widespread, but it has been going on for many months.
This sort of shift is hardly surprising. Obama’s support has dropped a bit among Democrats, too (understandably, because he hasn’t fulfilled the hopes of the more radical members of the Party), but nowhere near as much. The vast majority of Republicans never liked Obama to begin with and still don’t, so one would not expect a whole lot of change there. But the key to his victory was his ability to appeal to independents. And they have left him, as the article said, “in droves.”
There are those on the left who think this is because Obama hasn’t gone far enough in his transformative leftist policies. But this is wishful thinking on their part, and defies logic. As a group, independents tend to be more middle-of-the-road, so it stands to reason that they thought Obama would function more as a centrist, and that they have now been thoroughly disabused of that notion.
One of the earliest pieces I ever wrote on this blog concerned what I call “the Law of Thirds.” The following is an except from it that still seems relevant:
Some time ago–”“long before I became a blogger, or even a neocon”“–I noticed a certain phenomenon and gave it what I thought was a unique name: the “Law of Thirds.”…Basically, my law refers to the fact that the populace of the US seems to be divided roughly into thirds, at least in the political sense: one-third on the entrenched left, one-third on the entrenched right, and one-third in between. It was something I’d noticed over and over in public opinion polls, and it seemed to be stable over time…
Those who are considerably to the right or left often seem to have [something] in common: when their party happens to get into power, they believe it means that the Law of Thirds has been repealed, just for them. It hasn’t. As far as I know it’s still in operation, and has been for quite some time. Anyone from either radical third who thinks the American people will be happy to give his/her third a permanent ascendance in American political life is quite wrong, IMHO, and that person will be soundly rejected by said American people if he/she arrogantly and openly displays the hubris of thinking so”“–whether that person’s name be Howard Dean or Newt Gingrich or whomever else would be an even better example of the genre.
Do I hear “Obama?”
Obama and the core of “corpsman”
It’s a small point; really very small in the larger scheme of things: President Obama mispronounced the title “Corpsman” several times at a prayer breakfast, saying “Corpse-man” instead of the proper “Core-man.”
The usual suspects have criticized him for this error. My first impulse, however, is to feel a small harmonic quiver of empathy. How many among us have not made the error of mispronouncing something we’ve only read in books but never heard, or at least never paid much attention to? Terribly embarrassing, and not at all unusual, especially for the reclusive and bookish.
The left used to take great delight in reaming out Bush for saying “nukular” instead of “nuclear.” And yet that was a widespread regionalism, an acceptable and common pronunciation of the word in many parts of the country—just not the parts of the country in which the left ordinarily resides. They considered Bush’s pronunciation just another piece of evidence for the imbecility of his small and chimpish mind.
Obama’s “Corpsman,” however, is a far more idiosyncratic blunder. Although a small one, it is not entirely trivial, because it is almost perfectly emblematic of some of the deeper divisions between left and right. Perhaps Obama’s supporters might even consider it to be a badge of honor, because it is evidence of Obama’s career in academia—his bookishness rather than his real-life experience—as well as his ignorance of all things military. These are traits shared (and in some ways admired) by many in the left.
What’s more, it’s an example of Obama’s international outlook, which is another leftist plus. His childhood was largely spent away from this country; in some ways he is rather unfamiliar with the basic American vernacular and ethos, and has had to try to pick such things up as he goes along. Understandably, there are gaps. And, understandably, the military would be one of them.
You may think I’m making much ado about almost nothing. And indeed, I am. But I have noticed that, with a man as carefully scripted and controlled as Obama, who purposely conceals a great deal about himself, the gaffes and thowaway remarks can loom unusually large in helping to tell us what might be going on (or failing to go on) beneath the public persona.
Sullivan, Edwards, Palin and the Atlantic
I don’t link to Andrew Sullivan, and you may notice I ordinarily don’t discuss him.
And I’m not going to do too much of either here, except to say I consider that something very sad and disturbing happened to his mind a number of years ago. Here’s a post from Tom Maguire that discusses the latest bizarre manifestation of this fact.
My point is a different one, and it’s not really about Sullivan himself. I have a question: why is the Atlantic still providing a forum for Sullivan’s descent into irrelevancy, illogic, and obsession? He may not know any better. But surely they ought to realize it’s time to quietly draw the curtain.
Too much heat for the boiling frog?
I often think that, had Pelosi, Reid, and Obama been just a little smarter, they would have moved more slowly and incrementally to the left. If they had not given away their hand so quickly, they might have lulled the voters into a false sense of security, and would still have their sixty votes in the Senate and an excellent chance for re-election in 2010. This would have been especially true had they paid more attention to the economy and job creation.
But they moved more quickly than that. Has that frog in the pot—the American voter— noticed he was about to be boiled to death, and leapt soon enough to thwart their plans?
[NOTE: Here’s what really happens to those boiling frogs.]
What’s Obama got against Vegas?
Twice he’s spoken out against going to that city. Why? Here’s my PJ article in which I speculate on why Obama might have it in for Vegas.
[NOTE: On looking at the comments over at PJ, I notice that some of the commenters find the article trivial and/or petty. And here I thought it would be a relief from my usual heavy weightedness! But I don’t find the topic trivial. I didn’t see it as all that interesting when Obama trashed Vegas once. But the fact that he saw fit to trash it a second time, after having seen the negative response from Las Vegans and the state of Nevada the first time, gave the second incident more significance.]
Obama’s philosophically fascist SOTU speech
Fascinating analysis here, by a student at Obama’s alma mater, Harvard Law School.
And speaking of Vegas: can Republicans run the table in the Senate elections of 2010?
I wouldn’t bet on it.
But it’s theoretically possible that Republicans could win back the Senate in 2010 if they play their cards right.
There are ten Senate seats in play that are currently held by Democrats but are considered “competitive” for Republicans, and Republicans would have to win every single one—as well as keeping all of its own currently held seats. These ten “competitive” races include states that are so traditionally Democratic that just a short while ago it seemed literally impossible that Republicans could win there. But post-Brown, anything seems possible, and strong Republican candidates have been coming forward to run in the presently encouraging environment.
Let’s remember that things could change dramatically in the nine long months that remain till the next election. Just consider the last nine months if you doubt this fact. But looking back, the reports of the death of the Republican Party seem to have been a tad premature.