LotM/170; –a lot of people find his generalship difficult to understand in the light of his 1864 ‘peace’ campaign for president. they reason that if he was ideologically willing to run for president as the anti-Lincoln openly promising to make a settlement with the Rebellion and end the hostilities, then was he ideologically motivated –perhaps subconsciously even –to be forever ‘leaning back’ from fighting the army until it had reached some number or level of training that seemed never to be enough.

I think this is why the first requisite for a commander must *always* be someone who is “interested in victory.” If the commitment is not there, in the gut, so to speak, then there’s always the concern that some other reactionary reflex will overtake at the worst possible time.

Tactics can be learned; instinct cannot. That’s why I personally put a high value on instinct in a candidate for POTUS. There is no way a person can know everything they need to know for that office. But a person with the right instincts will find their way if they are smart enough to surround themselves with the right kind of advisors, ie the people who DO know acc to their individual areas of expertise. OTOH when you elect a person who lacks the right instincts or, worse still, someone with the wrong instincts, no amount of good advice is going to help in a time of crisis when decisions are often made on instinct alone because the desired info is simply not available.

That Obama is not committed to American victory (and pretty much said as much in the context of Iran) — ie, his instincts range from non-existent to badly warped — was clear to a lot of people before the election, and was likely what scared the cr@p out of them on a subliminal level.