For the annals of "Unexpectedly": "For Obama, an Unexpected Legacy of Two Full Terms at War."

Remember, as you listen, week after week, to predictions about what's going to happen next fall and in the coming 4 years: All the erstwhile seers are going to be calling everything "unexpected." I mean, if a Democrat wins, they'll be calling each bad thing unexpected, and if a Republican wins they call each good thing unexpected. That's me posing as a seer. If I'm wrong, it will be unexpectedly.

The headline quoted in the post title appears in — can you guess? — The New York Times. From the text:

[Obama] has now been at war longer than Mr. Bush, or any other American president.

And — unless he shuts down all war by November or we amend the Constitution — no one can ever beat his record.

Mr. Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009....

They might want to avoid that advance Peace Prize move in the future... unless they want to promote war. (But, of course, Obama wasn't given the Peace Prize because they'd predicted he'd end Bush's wars. He was given the Peace Prize because he'd caused America to progress from what the Norwegians saw as our benighted racist ways and to elect a black President.)

The NYT portrays Obama's war legacy in a golden light:

His closest advisers say he has relied so heavily on limited covert operations and drone strikes because he is mindful of the dangers of escalation and has long been skeptical that American military interventions work.

He is mindful... A GOP President is lucky to get credit for thinking at all. Did the NYT ever call GWB "mindful"? Will it call President Trump "mindful"? Yes, I'm predicting that Trump will win. It's an "unexpectedly" kind of year.

I happened to glance at the comments at the NYT. The newest one at the moment says: "The opening sentence reveals the republican slant making the rest of the article invalid." Ah! Poor NYT! Here I am writing about its Democratic Party slant and some reader is bashing it from the other side. The NYT has reason to think we are getting this just right. 

"Okay, so as a looney leftie who is constantly told by liberals I can't dislike Obama for things like..."

"... ramping up the drone war, finding legal justification to extrajudicially murder American citizens without trial, and so on and so forth, because of his "other accomplishments" that just outweigh that so much. You know, like that hand-out to the insurance industry instead of giving us Single Payer healthcare we all asked for, oh and don't forget, he's cool with gay people! So *waves hands* just forget all this icky shit happening, he loves teh gays! Isn't that just progressive? So, for real, considering this is fucking flat out going down the 1984/Police State hole, can I officially hate Obama for such obviously fascist positions? Can I just say I hate him, just this once, and not be told that I'm not a good liberal because of it? That I need to let it go because he's done some minor stuff for regular people? What the living hell is going on with our government? How can they make these kind of arguments with a straight face, and why am I expected to take them fucking seriously, and treat them with respect when they pull this kind of shit? How am I supposed to take Democrats seriously when this is just as bad, or worse, than anything Bush II ever pulled while in the White House? This was a moment that the shoe incident needed a fucking repeat. Maybe a swift redwing to the noggin might make Obama realize he's being the worst he can fucking be. He may have skipped Nancy Reagan's funeral for this, but god damn did he position himself on the coattails of Reagan with this speech. Seriously, I am so angry right now. I can hardly even contain it over this shit. Honestly, any government official suggesting this kind of thing against their citizens should be fucking impeached."

A comment on a Metafilter post about "Obama, at South by Southwest, Calls for Law Enforcement Access in Encryption Fight."

Understanding the pain of long-term Obama lovers.

In about an hour, I'm recording a Bloggingheads episode with someone who has loved Obama for so long and may be about to come out and say it's over. Just to remind you: I voted for Obama in '08, but not because I was smitten. I was grimly practical, choosing between 2 less-than-perfect options. And then in '12, I voted for Romney:

[As I had written at the time, when I voted for him in 2008,] I didn't trust Obama, and I feared what he would do with a Democratic Congress. We all saw what he did with a Democratic Congress. He let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have their way with him. It was horrible. It led to the Tea Party and the trouncing Democrats took in 2010. I've felt no connection to the Democratic Party since then. Of course, I don't like half of what the Republicans stand for, but I've still voted for some of them, notably Ron Johnson and (twice!) Scott Walker, because... what choice do I have? The Democrats have been leading us into financial ruin.

If I could have been assured that the GOP would control both houses of Congress, I might have thought Obama would be good. I like balance, moderation, and pragmatism. If one of the hardcore righties had won the Republican nomination, I would probably have gone for Obama. But Mitt Romney got the nomination, which is what I had been hoping for (after Mitch Daniels decided not to run). It was time to pay attention again to Obama The Candidate, and his campaign centered on vilifying Mitt Romney in the most inane Occupy-Wall-Street style that was completely alienating to me. Romney seamlessly transitioned from being my choice in the primaries to being my presumptive choice for President. I remained open to Obama. Obama could have won me.

Now, I'm pretty supportive of Obama's stepped up war on terrorism and the implicit appreciation it shows for what George W. Bush had to deal with. So help me think about how to talk with somebody who's falling out of love with Obama.

Of course, the election looms, and everything potentially connects to that.

The NYT editorial gives Obama something like his share of criticism for dragging America into another war.

Given the circumstances of this dramatic new war, it's hard to read "Wrong Turn on Syria: No Convincing Plan" as the equivalent of what they'd have thrown at George Bush if he'd done the same, but the criticism is substantial. There's no mention of Bush, by the way. No worse-than-Bush talk.

President Obama has put America at the center of a widening war by expanding into Syria airstrikes against the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group known as ISIS and ISIL. He has done this without allowing the public debate that needs to take place before this nation enters another costly and potentially lengthy conflict in the Middle East.... How are Americans to know whether they have the information to make any judgment on the wisdom of his actions?...  In the absence of public understanding or discussion and a coherent plan, the strikes in Syria were a bad decision.

How do we know there is no plan or that the decision is "bad" if we're deprived of information? The premise must be that the President can never determine that a sudden, secret attack is necessary to protect America. The NYT seems to be saying the decision is "bad" because Congress and the rest of us Americans were left out of the loop.

I'm not convinced. It's possible that what Obama knew about Khorasan justified obliterating them with a sneak attack — that we just got saved from another 9/11. It's hard for a President to get credit for what doesn't happen. Rightly so. If it were easy to get credit, Presidents would resort to tricking us with claims of credit, "1984"-style.

... The White House claims that Mr. Obama has all the authority he needs under the 2001 law approving the use of force in Afghanistan and the 2002 law permitting the use of force in Iraq, but he does not.

He also claims power as Commander in Chief.

The administration also claims that the airstrikes are legal under international law because they were done in defense of Iraq. In a Sept. 20 letter to the United Nations, Iraq complained that the Islamic State was attacking its territory and said American assistance was needed to repel the threat. But the United Nations Security Council should vote on the issue.

Here's where a mention of George Bush would be particularly apt. Back to the NYT:

Meanwhile, Congress has utterly failed in its constitutional responsibilities. It has left Washington and gone into campaign fund-raising mode, shamelessly ducking a vote on this critical issue....

The silence means something. Members of Congress were informed. Maybe they understood the value of speed and secrecy here. Investigations can come later, perhaps looking into security successes, rather than, as with Benghazi, failures.

So, even though polls have shown public support for airstrikes in Syria, it may not last. Mr. Obama has said there needs to be a sustained mission against ISIS over an unlimited period; it’s unlikely the Americans would back a prolonged campaign if they don’t fully understand the aims or likelihood of success.

So there is public support, though it's hard to see how we support what we can't understand, including attacks on an enemy with a name we just saw yesterday. The NYT falls back on the problem of sustaining support for a long war. America gets tired of war, we are, inevitably, told. But we sit back and allow war. And we are harshly critical when we see that the President had a chance to preempt an attack and exercised restraint.

It is puzzling that Mr. Obama... kept details about Khorasan secret so the group would not know it was being tracked.

Puzzling... or completely understandable? The news report in the NYT says the aim was to "wipe out the leadership" of Khorasan. If we knew where they were and needed to hit them before they moved, what's the puzzle? The editorial observes that bin Laden was discussed publicly, but how many times over how many years did we have a shot at bin Laden and miss it*?

These incongruities — two enemies now, instead of one — call into question whatever sense of purpose and planning the administration hopes to project. 

Let me guess: Commander in Chief.

______________________________

* On September 10, 2001, the day before the 9/11 attacks, Bill Clinton — on a paid speaking gig before 30 businessmen in Australia — said: "I'm just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden - he's a very smart guy, I've spent a lot of time thinking about him — and I nearly got him once... I nearly got him. And I could have killed him...."

"With his new offensive against Islamic State terrorists in Syria, Barack Obama has a chance to revive his presidency, but the only way he can do that is to become a brand-new president..."

"... one who will be almost unrecognizable to his supporters. Obama must go from being the president who was elected to end wars — his most treasured self-image — to the president who finally leads one effectively," writes Michael Hirsh in Politico.

And he must now do it in two countries where for most of his presidency he has most resisted getting more deeply involved — Iraq and Syria

“His whole national persona since 2004 has been about the question: Can he get us out of Iraq?” says former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, harking back to Obama’s signature speech calling the Iraq invasion a “dumb” war. “It is almost Shakespearian that he would be dragged back into another conflict in the same countries where he opposed the use of force.” Nonetheless, Burns believes, Obama now has no choice. The Islamic State’s spread now threatens not only Iraq and Syria but also essential U.S. allies, including Jordan and Turkey. “There is no question that the president has to act,” says Burns.

This made me dig into my archive, looking for statements about why, after voting for Bush in '04, I voted for Obama in '08. Here's one from January 16, 2009, a few days before Obama took office:

Who will restore George Bush's tattered reputation? Barack Obama!

Charles Krauthammer explains:

The beauty of democratic rotations of power is that when the opposition takes office, cheap criticism and calumny will no longer do. The Democrats now own Iraq. They own the war on al-Qaeda. And they own the panoply of anti-terror measures with which the Bush administration kept us safe these past seven years.

Which is why Obama is consciously creating a gulf between what he now dismissively calls "campaign rhetoric" and the policy choices he must make as president. Accordingly, Newsweek — Obama acolyte and scourge of everything Bush/Cheney — has on the eve of the Democratic restoration miraculously discovered the arguments for warrantless wiretaps, enhanced interrogation and detention without trial. Indeed, Newsweek's neck-snapping cover declares, "Why Obama May Soon Find Virtue in Cheney's Vision of Power."

This is something I thought a lot about when I decided to vote for Obama. The Democrats need their turn in the position of power so they will own and take responsibility for the things that really do need to be done. And it is an opportunity for all of us to see and understand clearly what these things are.

"I was not here in the run-up to Iraq in 2003. It would have been fascinating to see the momentum and how it builds."

Said President Obama to an unnamed set of persons just before his ISIS speech last week, according to some unspecified persons within that set, according to Peter Baker in the NYT.

It would have been fascinating... That's so professorial and distant. And read between the lines: He's seeing the momentum and how it builds now, in 2014, and he's projecting himself into the mind of George Bush, who experienced the momentum then and made the decision that seemed so wrong at the time to Barack Obama when he was not here in the White House.

Baker's source tells us:

Obama told his staff... not to evaluate their own policy based on external momentum. He would not rush to war. He would be deliberate.

I can't tell whether Obama thinks or meant to suggest that Bush responded to "external momentum," "rushe[ed] to war," and was not "deliberate." But I suspect that Obama remembers the way he judged Bush back in 2003, and he doesn't want to be what he thought George Bush was.

In forming a plan to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria using airpower and local forces, but not regular American ground troops, he searched for ways to avoid the mistakes of the past. 

Another way to put that is: Obama feels like George Bush, yet he must not be George Bush. Obama feels compelled to go to war in Iraq, but it must not be the same as what George Bush did. So he's grasping at distinctions: 1. He's taking it more slowly, being deliberate, and thoughtful. (Remember: Bush had no brain and was a cowboy.) 2. He doing it all from the air, so lofty and elevated. (Remember: Bush put boots on the ground. Ugh! Boots, so brutal! The ground, so lowly and filthy!)

“This will be a problem for the next president,” Mr. Obama said ruefully...

Ruefully.... see? Obama is not like Bush, he and his friends in the press are desperate to have you know. I've long seen "ruefully" an absurd adverbial boost to the good old verb "said." (Ask my ex-husband, the novelist, who I don't think ever used "ruefully" again after that one time I pointed it out, though I adopted "he said ruefully" to add punch to subsequent conversations. By the way, one of Elmore Leonard's 10 rules for writers was: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue." I'd add: Especially not "ruefully.")

“... and probably the one after that.”

But he alternated between resolve as he vowed to retaliate against President Bashar al-Assad if Syrian forces shot at American planes, and prickliness as he mocked critics of his more reticent approach to the exercise of American power.

“Oh, it’s a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than ‘don’t do stupid things,’ ” guests recalled him saying, sarcastically imitating his adversaries. “I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if it doesn’t make for good theater.”

I laughed and laughed when I got to that line. Doesn’t make for good theater! But he is doing theater, the theater of thoughtfulness, the theater of reticence. He said "theater" because he was aware he was in a theater. Like an actor breaking the fourth wall, talking to the audience about the play within which he finds himself.

If we shadows have offended... That's Shakespeare. I'm trying to think of some 20th century play where an actor turns to the audience and says something close to I'm afraid this doesn’t make for good theater. It's a well-worn theatrical move. It's called "meta-reference."

And I know there's a Greek term for rhetoric like "I do not make apologies for being careful...." He's complimenting himself within the guise of self-criticism. Or are we just saying "humblebrag" these days?

Cool eyes hallucinating at the constitutional lawprofs of war.

"Obama attacked from the left" is a tag of mine, and I'm applying it to this NYT op-ed by Yale conlawprof Bruce Ackerman: "Obama’s Betrayal of the Constitution." Dateline — ominously! — Berlin. Excerpt:

President Obama’s declaration of war against the terrorist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria marks a decisive break in the American constitutional tradition. Nothing attempted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, remotely compares in imperial hubris....

That's a bold beginning, but it's actually weakened by seeming to open up a discussion of the need for a formal declaration of war, something that the United States hasn't had since WWII. But Ackerman proceeds to discuss the "authorization for the use of military force," which Congress gave to President Bush 3 days after the 9/11 attacks. That vote was practically unanimous.

Let me take a little detour of my own here. The "no" vote in 2001 was from Barbara Lee, who was called a "traitor" and a "communist" at the time, but whose words are strikingly prescient today.

"We will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are."

Thank you, George Bush. I mean, Barack Obama.

ISIS Determined to Strike in U.S.

On "Fox News Sunday" yesterday, Lindsey Graham had a talking point he wanted to make sure he nailed:

I think of an American city in flames because of the terrorist ability to operate in Syria and Iraq... a direct threat to the United States... the threat we face from being attacked from Syria, now Iraq... these people... attacking the homeland?

They have expressed a desire to do so.... protect the American homeland.... an existential threat to the homeland.... we're threatened. T

he homeland is threatened by the presence of ISIL in Iraq and Syria.... the threats we face... protecting the homeland... a direct threat to our homeland... we're about to be attacked in a serious way because of the threat emanating from Syria and Iraq... It is about our homeland.

And if we get attacked because he has no strategy to protect us, then he will have committed a blunder for the ages....

... there are more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, with more money, with more weapons, and more capabilities to attack the homeland than there was before 9/11. Mr. President, if you don't adjust your strategy, these people are coming here....

Graham is laying the groundwork. He wants it on record, the equivalent of the famous pre-9/11 memo: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

"Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto blasted Republicans on Wednesday for preparing to file a federal lawsuit challenging the executive actions of President Barack Obama."

"During an interview with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Cavuto belittled the effort as 'an enormous waste of effort' and 'a political football,' suggesting that President George W. Bush used similar executive authority."

The Washington Post editors say "President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy."

But it's not like they come down too hard on the President they have loved so much:

Mr. Obama is not responsible for [the "misbehavior" of Russian President Vladimir Putin, among others]... The model for Mr. Putin’s occupation of Crimea was his incursion into Georgia in 2008, when George W. Bush was president....

Bush did it too.

The urge to pull back — to concentrate on what Mr. Obama calls “nation-building at home” — is nothing new....

Nothing especially bad about Obama here.

The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want American “boots on the ground” all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of Iraq. So let’s stipulate: We don’t want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don’t want U.S. troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters, so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple.

We pretty much agree with everything Obama has been doing. We're all responsible, all in cahoots.

But it’s also true that....

That what?! That we're screwed? We can't get what we want?

Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish they did not. 

We wish and wish. We cling to these wishes, and Putin knows it of course. The WaPo editors offer nothing really — other than an acknowledgment that wishing is the stuff of fantasy.

There's really no substance in this editorial. There's also some literary swill:

1. Metaphor about tides — the "tides of war" and the "tide of democracy" — which lure us into indulging in the fantasy that war and democracy are forces of nature that have their ways that transcend the actions of individual human beings (like Putin). Obama would love to expatiate about the tides rising or receding, but that's the passive observer's view of history.

2. Some flourish around what "century" we are in. John Kerry, doing one of the Sunday shows, said Russia's action toward Ukraine is "a 19th century act in the 21st century," and the WaPo editors, having observed the things that are happening in this century, end on the hapless, helpless note: "Sadly, that’s the nature of the century we’re living in."

We must stop the drought. Stop the drought. Now watch this drive.

A variation on a famous old quote that sprang to mind when I read this headline: "Obama Plays Water-Guzzling Desert Golf Courses Amid California Drought/After preaching shared sacrifice to assuage the California water shortage, Obama has played some of the country's thirstiest golf courses."

In case you don't get the reference:



Bush subsequently gave up golfing, saying: "I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf... I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

"It's downright appalling that the Obama administration would give in to right-wing obstruction and nominate ... an anti-choice, anti-equality candidate for the federal bench."

"Putting forward a right-wing candidate that would make George W. Bush think twice for a lifetime judicial appointment isn't horse-trading; it's caving on core progressive values, period."

ADDED: A week ago, I blogged about the Congressional Black Caucus meeting with Valerie Jarret about this and one member complaining: "Do you think George Bush would have been able to do this, or any white president would have been able to do this? No.... This is a terrible mistake, history will record it as such.... And it breaks my heart that it’s a black president."

Second term Obama is like second term Bush.

Ron Fournier makes 9 points of comparison.

And a new poll at WaPo says:

Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.

I find the headline there painfully funny: "Obama suffers most from year of turmoil, poll finds." It's always all about Obama! Even the suffering. Poor Obama. What about all the people who are suffering as the malfunctioning Obamacare machine cranks into action? I know, the point is that he's doing the worst in the poll, but phrasing it like that — Obama suffers most — is absurd. And I assume they mean to help Obama, to inspire sympathy for him. It's patronizing to him, and it's unsympathetic to everyone else who is suffering.

Obama at 37%.

As pictured by Drudge:



Bush's final approval rating in the CBS poll was 22%, but he didn't sink as far as 37% until 2006, 2 years after reelection. [ADDED: According to what's shown now here, Bush was at 37% in November 2005, which corresponds exactly to Obama. I was looking at a less detailed graph.] Bush's real sinking in the polls occurred with Katrina, which the media exploited to damage Bush.

By contrast, the media have generally boosted Obama, especially last year, facilitating his reelection. They minimized the various scandals, and they declined to delve into the looming problems in Obamacare.

Now we see crashing in Obama polls, and part of this is the media's fault. 1. They lulled people into thinking Obama was doing well enough, which continued his presidency, based on a false picture. 2. When the true picture could no longer be obscured, it was so glaring and obvious, and it got everyone's attention. 3. So many people were liking Obama because liking Obama was a cultural phenomenon, which inflated Obama's popularity and left it vulnerable to crashing when, at long last, there's a cultural message that it's the thing now not to like him anymore. 4. Plenty of people probably never liked him all that much, and they're just liberated from the social pressure to follow the latest thing, which is now so 5 years ago.

The NYT acknowledges Obama's in trouble by reminding us that Bush was really, really bad. Remember?!!

At the website front page the teaser headline  — which is also the headline in the paper version — is:  "As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama." But if you click to the article, the headline becomes "Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response."

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels:

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama's?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

But let's check out the asserted parallels in that NYT article by Michael D. Shear:

The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn. 

Oh, well, that's another nonparallel. Republicans oppose Obama, unlike those Democrats who sometimes helped Bush. And the NYT reinforces my point #5 (above).

But think about it this way, NYT. What if Bush and the Republicans had created the hurricane, and the Democrats adamantly believed it would be better not to have a hurricane? Would the Democrats have been "occasionally cooperative" to Republicans who smugly announced that they won the election and they've been wanting this hurricane for 100 years and canceling the hurricane was not an option?

Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. 

Oh? Note the wording. It doesn't say that important Republicans were bringing up Katrina on their own. I suspect that the journalist, Shear, asked various Republicans to talk about Bush and Katrina and some of them did.

“The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.” 

Okay, so Shear got Feaver to put a name on the assertion that Republicans made the comparison. No other Republican is named. Shear moves on to Obama's "top aides" and tells us — here's my point #5 again —  that they stressed how unlike Katrina it is, since "Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it. Those are very different issues."

I agree. The health care screwup isn't a natural disaster. Obama and the Democrats made their own disaster, stepping up to do something they should have known they weren't going to be able to do well, and they lied about what they were doing to get it passed.

And yet they meant well. They wanted to help people. Unlike Bush, who — what? — asked for that hurricane?

ADDED: My point #4, above, draws from this passage in Bush's "Decision Points" (previously blogged here):

If I invoked the Insurrection Act against [Governor Blanco's] wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That left me in a tough position. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states' rights tensions, could unleash holy hell.

And the NYT would have framed it that way (which is my point #5).

"Smooth, Europhile Democrats would win over the world, ushering in an era of peace and good feeling."

That was the promise back in 2008. It seems so stupid now. And speaking of stupid, remember how stupid Bush was?

Say what you will about George W. Bush's diplomacy, but he nurtured relationships with our most important allies -- like Britain -- and managed to put together a huge multinational coalition for his own foray against an Arab dictator suspected of having chemical weapons. Obama's diplomatic efforts -- championed by Hillary Clinton and, now, John Kerry -- are looking more and more inept by comparison: So far, our only ally in the proposed Syria venture is France, maybe.

Let's give Hillary some credit for ducking out at the right moment.... hitting her own reset button... leaving Obama in the... shall we say?... lurch.

"I know you're trying to subtly rope me in to the issues of the day. I refuse to be roped in."

Said George W. Bush, handling questions about Syria in precisely the style that befits a former President, speaking publicly.

But what if President Obama were to privately consult with George Bush? This is something I've fantasized about. I imagine Obama talking about how much he understands now what Bush went through and how Bush is the one person in the world who understands what he's going through. I picture Bush supporting the younger man in a completely empathetic and patriotic way.

Obama: "I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy. I think it's a sign of maturity..."

"... because probably five years ago, six years ago we might not have been having this debate. And I think it's interesting that there are some folks on the left but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it, who weren't very worried about it when it was a Republican president."

I watched the video at the link 3 times because I was fascinated by the hesitations and the facial expressions. I can't tell when/whether he's lying, but I can tell when he's pleased with himself.

"You can’t have 100 percent security and then also have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience."

"You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society."