“Six Years In, Left Still Doesn’t Understand Who They Elected,” David Steinberg writes at his PJM column:
Powerline’s Steven Hayward notes yesterday’s remarkable article at the Daily Beast by Leslie Gelb, a liberal blue-blood who pronounced Obama’s presidency dead and gone after being a no-show in Paris this week. Further, Gelb demonstrated the reappearance of JFK-style “muscular” liberalism, in which policy is governed by silly ideas about economic utopianism yet still connected to reality in terms of our enemies’ intentions. A national liberalism, instead of the international socialism favored by Obama.
Gelb made several recommendations for dismantling Obama’s foreign policy apparatus — he offers plenty of commentary and specifics, but Gelb’s recommendations boil down entirely to “fire the leftists and hire some adults,” many of whom are establishment Republicans.
Oh no, the cry for the wise old men! Mickey Kaus was wondering when they’d be arriving since the beginning of 2010. But Obama perceives no need for a David Gergen-esque centrist fixer, and who among them would want to work with Obama’s distaff Svengali, Valerie Jarrett?
More from David Steinberg’s post:
Gelb wouldn’t be making these recommendations if he understood that Obama does not see his presidency as a teetering failure, and never intended today’s foreign policy approach to be anything besides what it has become. This is a key distinction representing the right’s analytical achievement over the prior six years as compared to Gelb’s elitist commentariat left. We not only were right about liberalism, we were right about Obama’s character and intentions, both then and now. The past six years played out exactly as predicted, both by the 23-million-listener radio show and by the Tea Party shopowner in Iowa who went under, both of whom you mocked and continue to mock mercilessly.
Read the whole thing. As David notes, the White House believes its foreign policy is moving along quite nicely, thank you very much, no matter how awful it looks to the rest of us — and to Democrat operatives with bylines such as Gelb and the New York Times’ Robert Mackey, who have to defend the White House’s lunacy to the rest of the world:
Obama: How should we respond to the terrorist attack? Staff: Ignore it. Obama: What else? Staff: Release some terrorists? Obama: Perfect.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 15, 2015
As for the GOP, this might be the perfect time for someone to assume the sale and start acting, umm, presidential to fill America’s leadership vacuum, as Roger L. Simon wrote last night.
Update: “Jarrett on Paris ‘Parade’: ‘We Certainly Got the Substance Right.'”
As I think Jonah Goldberg said in the latest Goldberg, Long and Podhoretz “GLoP” podcast at Ricochet, this is an administration that believes just saying the right words is the equivalent of solving any problem. In other words, this is an administration heavily vested in magical thinking. But that can happen when your administration’s chief spokesman made his bones posing front of styrofoam columns.
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