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WSJ’s Weekend Interview carried a warning.
Yale Prof. Charles Hill is often called a “conservative.” But he is one of the foremost students and advocates of what he calls the “liberal” (“in the finest sense of the word”) world order. And he is worried that Americans increasingly don’t understand how special the modern era has been or their own crucial role in developing and securing it.
To some, the Obama’s administration’s desire to “lead from behind” and seek United Nations approval for actions abroad represents an appropriate retreat to a more humble American posture. Mr. Hill, by contrast, sees the possible end of a great era of human rights and democracy promotion the likes of which the planet has never seen.
Our world has “been increasingly tolerant and increasingly trying to eradicate racism and increasingly trying to expand freedom. And it can come to an end,” he says.
What might replace it? “Spheres of influence.” Or to use a more archaic term, “empire.”
Mr. Hill is the all-too-rare professor with an extensive background outside of academia. He made his career in the U.S. foreign service working on China and the Middle East, among other issues. He has advised secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz and served as a policy consultant to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Boutros Ghali. His ability to combine real-world experience with appreciation of the intellectual currents animating history—Dickens comes up during our discussion of the anti-slavery movement in 19th-century Britain—has made his courses some of the most popular at Yale. …
… What amazes Mr. Hill is how much of a break the Obama foreign policy represents compared with the bipartisan consensus stretching back to Truman. That culminated in President George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, which he likens to an “emancipation proclamation for the world.” But, he says, “The democracy wave that began 20 years ago [at the end of the Cold War] is now turning backward.” Why? “The conduct of the Obama administration.”
So the future is still very much a choice, not an inevitability, I ask.
“Absolutely. It’s been a choice,” he says. “I’m not so sure now that people even see the choice because the mentalities are shifting. …
Jennifer Rubin posts on 1.5% ‘growth.’
He can blame George Bush. He can whine that he was handed a terrible economy. (Ronald Reagan inherited worse.) But there’s no spin that will make 1.5 percent growth in GDP anything but dismal. It is not a recovery we are in; this is what we need to recover from — anemic growth, endemically high unemployment and record poverty.
What is the president’s big idea? Raise taxes on small business. What is he campaigning on? Mitt Romney’s tax returns. What’s his major rhetorical thrust? Businessmen shouldn’t claim credit for their success.
You know why the media sycophants want to talk about David Cameron (the man who apologized to North Korea for a mix-up with flags and gave Obama smooches in 2008). You understand David Axelrod wants to flog a blind quote in a British newspaper. You can see why Obama isn’t asked hard questions.
The latest news only points up how irrelevant, if not absurd, is most of the media coverage of the presidential campaign. …
Kim Strassel writes on “four little words.”
What’s the difference between a calm and cool Barack Obama, and a rattled and worried Barack Obama? Four words, it turns out.
“You didn’t build that” is swelling to such heights that it has the president somewhere unprecedented: on defense. Mr. Obama has felt compelled—for the first time in this campaign—to cut an ad in which he directly responds to the criticisms of his now-infamous speech, complaining his opponents took his words “out of context.”
That ad follows two separate ones from his campaign attempting damage control. His campaign appearances are now about backpedaling and proclaiming his love for small business. And the Democratic National Committee produced its own panicked memo, which vowed to “turn the page” on Mr. Romney’s “out of context . . . BS”—thereby acknowledging that Chicago has lost control of the message.
The Obama campaign has elevated poll-testing and focus-grouping to near-clinical heights, and the results drive the president’s every action: his policies, his campaign venues, his targeted demographics, his messaging. That Mr. Obama felt required—teeth-gritted—to address the “you didn’t build that” meme means his vaunted focus groups are sounding alarms.
The obsession with tested messages is precisely why the president’s rare moments of candor—on free enterprise, on those who “cling to their guns and religion,” on the need to “spread the wealth around”—are so revealing. They are a look at the real man. It turns out Mr. Obama’s dismissive words toward free enterprise closely mirror a speech that liberal Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren gave last August.
Ms. Warren’s argument—that government is the real source of all business success—went viral and made a profound impression among the liberal elite, who have been pushing for its wider adoption. Mr. Obama chose to road-test it on the national stage, presumably thinking it would underline his argument for why the wealthy should pay more. It was a big political misstep, and now has the Obama team seriously worried. …
Charles Krauthammer replies to administration flacks.
Shortly after 9/11, President George W. Bush received from Prime Minister Tony Blair a bust of Winston Churchill as an expression of British-American solidarity. Bush gave it pride of place in the Oval Office.
In my Friday column about Mitt Romney’s trip abroad and U.S. foreign policy [“Why he’s going where he’s going,” op-ed], I wrote that Barack Obama “started his Presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office.”
Within hours, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer had created something of a bonfire. Citing my statement, he posted a furious blog on the White House Web site, saying, “normally, we wouldn’t address a rumor that’s so patently false, but just this morning the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer repeated this ridiculous claim in his column . . . This is 100% false. The bust [is] still in the White House. In the Residence. Outside the Treaty Room.”
Except that it isn’t. As the British Embassy said in a statement issued just a few hours later, “the bust now resides in the British ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C.”
As the British Embassy explained in 2009, the bust “was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the President was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new President has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned.”
QED.
At which point, one would expect Pfeiffer to say: Sorry, I made a mistake. End of story.
But Pfeiffer had an additional problem. …
Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.
Fallon: President Obama says he’ll visit Israel in his second term. Israel’s response, “We’ll put you down as a ‘Maybe.’”
Leno: President Obama’s college apartment in New York City is up for rent at $2,400 a month. Coincidentally, he was only there for one four-year lease.
Leno: Joe Biden says he had to ask his wife Jill to marry him five times. Five times! That’s not a proposal. That’s harassment!
Fallon: President Obama says thanks to him, people in the rest of the world have a new attitude toward America. It’s true — people used to hate us, but thanks to him, now they just feel sorry for us.