Barack Obama: the softly-softly president

[rpannier]

During their long and prickly battle for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton taunted Barack Obama with a television advertisement in which a telephone ringing at 3am in the White House went unanswered. The question was: who did Americans want to pick up the phone? “Someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world?” as the doom-laden voiceover suggested – in other words someone such as the supposedly battle-ready Mrs Clinton? Or someone such as Barack Obama, who at that stage had been in the United States Senate for a mere three years?

When it came to the Libyan crisis, Mr Obama left the figurative phone ringing for a fortnight, and as the British and French clamoured for a muscular response, did not speak to David Cameron for a week. Only when Col Muammar Gaddafi’s armoured divisions began picking off opposition-held towns, and when the Arab League supported a no-fly zone, did he change his mind, and only then after Hillary Clinton – now, of course, overseeing the answering of the phones at the State Department – and Susan Rice, his ambassador to the United Nations, persuaded him that it would not be in his interests to have another Srebrenica on his hands.

snip

In many ways, his critics have missed the point. With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan still active, the last impression this US president wants to give Americans is that they are at war on another front. That is why he avoided a sombre Oval Office address to the nation as the first missiles were launched into a dark far-away sky on the very day that Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced eight years ago. That is why he kept the press at arm’s length and made sure his family visited a Rio slum and the mountain-top statue of Christ the Redeemer.

snip

And so we have had the extraordinary spectacle of the French and the Arab League being more hawkish than the world’s sole superpower. Within a few days the Americans are determined to hand over command of the operation to Nato or another country. That, of course, brings its own problems, as the bickering between Nato partners over the precise aim of the mission has shown. But what should not be missed here is that far from lacking a foreign policy for the US, Obama is changing it.

link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/8399321/Barack-Obama-the-softly-softly-president.html

[Safetykitten]

1. Sooner or later, the comparisons and style comments will give way to...

him actually being his own President with accepting he's just not that good at it.

[dennis4868]

3. Or the author of that article is full of it...

And Obama is very good at his job...which is the view that many people take (save many Duers, lefty blogs, and the UNPL and of course the crazy right).

[rpannier]

5. The author actually thinks Obama is good at his job nt

[bluestateguy]

2. Pseudo intellectualism and pop political science

I bet the author thinks he's real smart too.

[Beacool]

4. Yep, that's what we got.

“Obama is intuitively a multilateralist and he doesn’t seem to believe that the US has any innate cultural superiority over other countries,” says David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The problem is he is also very pragmatic, politically self-interested, and as narcissistic as any political leader, which means he wants all events to rebound to his benefit personally.”

If Obama is not free of excessive personal regard, neither is he shy of using America’s clout when it suits him. He delivered a slap on the wrist to Brazil for irritating him over Iran by refusing to support its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. He hesitated little about using the US veto in the same forum against a resolution condemning Israeli settlements.

“The president knows how powerful the US is,” Mr Rothkopf says. “He is just fairly uncomfortable about using US military power.”

That, for all of us, may take some getting used to. Europeans wanted an anti-Bush figure. This is what they have got.

:eyes:

[dionysus]

6. and just where have you been young lady? out carousing i suppose

:D

[Beacool]

8. Can't blame a girl for trying............

:evilgrin:

[AtomicKitten]

7. He's disproving the myth that hubris is required in foreign policy.

k&r