An up and coming pundit named Richard Cohen writes:
It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges — of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama’s approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.
For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
AdvertisementThis, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?
Who indeed. If only Cohen worked for an organization that had people paid to gather facts and…what’s the word I’m looking for — reported them to the public — yes, that’s it! — before going all in on a candidate. Perhaps someone should invent such a business. It could combine a mass audience with a veneer of… hmmm, what’s a word that rhymes with mass? Class! Yes, that’s it.
You could print it on paper for a retro vibe and call it news on paper, a paper of news, something like that. I’m sure there’s got to be a catchier name for it, and it’ll come to me eventually. But in these days of media experimentation, such a venture could really catch on with elitist readers, particularly inside the Washington Beltway.
You gotta give Cohen credit for some intellectual honesty … and then you wanna smack yourself in the head and say, ‘where were you two years ago?’
The lack of self awareness is staggering.
Finally, the triumph of experience over “hope”.
Cohen wrote, “[Obama] is, above all, a pragmatist.”
But the key element of pragmatism is that the solution actually work – a quality predictably missing in Obama’s policies.
Obama reached far past his personal skills and abilities, and is now stuck with the crushing burden of actually having to be competent.
And we’re stuck with the resulting mess. God help us all.
With respect: a pragmatist opts for solutions that appear to work. Neville chamberlin fancied himself the greatest living pragmatist; so did royalists siding with king George III. And regrettably, so do people that find the robust system of capitalism and democracy to be messy and disorganized. People who are “clinging” to outdated ideas like working your way up in life on income not redistributed taxes offend rpagmatists. National health care? Its obviously the “way to go” to a pragmatist: less obvious are reasons one might not want the feds in control of the health care system.
All the comments are very impressive. The steepled fingers allusions to classical literature and history, international, intercultural knowledge gained during the past 50 plus years from universities, etc. Alas, lacking allusions to one classical tome now old hat. A part of fairy tale childhood. Unfortunately also the foundation ethos of the American Republic. Collated in the tome that contains Mosaic commands. Not relevant to politics in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Not in the “real” world where ideas like truth and trust are dismissable, n’est pas?
I’m with you in spirit, but the Left is looking for pretexts to subsidize the(ir) media with government money. Some of the things you write might be distorted to that purpose. The market failed to meet an essential public need blah blah blah…
Obama needs to worry far more about China’s ability to fund his great socialist experiment more than he needs to worry about China’s abysmal human rights record.
O is not a pragmatist. He is a Yahoo in the Johnathan Swift sense.
The Yahoos are primitive creatures obsessed with “pretty stones” they find by digging in mud, thus representing the distasteful materialism and ignorant elitism Swift encountered in Britain. Hence the term
I’m afraid I’ve become comfortably numb. When his name was first brought up as a candidate, he had been a Senator for two years and no real record. It worried me that I didn’t know what a community organizer is. It worried me more when I found out, along with his friendship with Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn and discipleship to Saul Alinsky and Jeremiah Wright.
Between him and Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, this is the perfect storm of profligacy in Washington, rolling on in spite of a weak economy here and around the world. Like I say, it’s mind-numbing.
Cohen was one of the leading advocates of the Iraq invasion, which as we all know was basically a “gut” move by W. Bush (whereas his Dad, more of a pragmatist, stayed out). Cohen’s underlying but unstated reasoning was that getting rid of Saddam would help Israel by a) cutting off a portion of Hamas’s funds, b) getting rid of Saddam’s WMDs, and 3) putting the U.S. in Iraq where it could mor effectively lean on another of Israel’s enemies, Iran. He has been trying to live down his mistake ever since. He dislikes Obama because Obama is not a knee-jerk supporter of Israel. That is all you need to know.
“Cohen’s underlying but unstated reasoning was that getting rid of Saddam would help Israel by a) cutting off a portion of Hamas’s funds, b) getting rid of Saddam’s WMDs, and 3) putting the U.S. in Iraq where it could mor effectively lean on another of Israel’s enemies, Iran.”
Cohen was correct on every item. The suicide bomber subsidy Saddam was providing was eliminated, as was the support he provided to several terrorists. The several hundred tons of unaccounted of WMDs which were recovered from Iraq cannot fall into enemy hands, and if there were bulk stockpiles, they are now in the hands of Russia or Syria, both at least slightly more accountable and stable opponents.
And the fact Obama [i]will not[/i] move against Iran does not mean we are not in a better position to move against Iran.
Ed, do you exist . . . to Cohen? You see, such things that you ask are only possible when they become a possibility in the consciousness of a Cohen, Brooks, or Noonan – and not one moment before. Thus, there was no news to gather before this very moment. It’s the old “if a tree falls in the woods . . .” question.
The evaluation of an action as practical depends on what it is that one wishes to practice. The evaluation of a politician as pragmatic can only be made when you know what ends he seeks to achieve.
All the President’s Rubes; Cohen self-identifies.
Like Quantum Mechanics, Obama is not hard to understand,
he is hard to believe, because his behavior is so far
removed from Classical norms.
Obama believes that America is over,
that this is a good thing, and that
his mission is to preside over the
diminution of the United States to
just another unitary state, with
him in charge; No one will be able
to blame him when it turns out that
sacrifices must be made, shortages
must be endured, and some animals
are more equal than others.
“… and then you wanna smack yourself in the head and say, ‘where were you two years ago?’”
Might be more effective to smack the Cohens of the world when you ask that question. But then again, maybe not. Those mushy brains seem to be protected by a pretty thick layer of what may as well be concrete (or perhaps titanium), thereby sealing the tired, hundred-year-old Progressive ideas to calcify therein, and forever insulating them from the light of reason.
I don’t read the Washington Post often, so I was somewhat taken aback by the confessional dear diary this love’s gone bad tone of Cohen’s piece. Richard Cohen is really the pseudonym of a 13 year old girl, right?
Nat Hentoff said it more succinctly: “I am beginning to think that this guy is a phony. Obama seems to have no firm principles that I can discern that he will adhere to. His only principle is his own aggrandizement.”
I always knew the guy was a phony.
The subject can be Obama or Cohen.
there is that moment that you think its warm and soft and it feels good between your toes, and the next one aww man its not mud, i just stepped in cow s***.
” 5. Diggs
Obama needs to worry far more about China’s ability to fund his great socialist experiment more than he needs to worry about China’s abysmal human rights record.”
China couldn’t fund it’s own socialist experiment. That is why China is now a Capitalist country. All that remains done is to get a democratically elected leadership and a bit more social freedom.
That will eventually happen as prosperity grows. By the USA is nothing more than a Muslim/Mexican gulag, China will rule the world.
How sure is he that BO secretly or not so secretly envies China and Russia’s repressive policies? What’s a little human rights abuse in order to bring in utopia. You know the needs of the many out way the needs of the few. Just think how much more he could accomplish if he could wield the same power – Tom Friedman sure thought this would be a good idea a few weeks ago.