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Time to look at the Obama presser on Tuesday. The Streetwise Professor Craig Pirrong is first.
If a foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds, Obama must be very broad minded indeed, because his policies on Libya and Syria have been wildly inconsistent: the “responsibility to protect” logic that underpinned the Libyan intervention (as equivocal as it was) would certainly justify intervention in Syria. But Obama has avoided even the suggestion of intervention in Syria like the plague.
Until now. He has drawn a red line, but in so doing, he sows confusion rather than producing clarity:
Seeking re-election in November, Obama noted that he had refrained “at this point” from ordering U.S. military engagement in Syria. But when he was asked at a White House news conference whether he might deploy forces, for example to secure Syrian chemical and biological weapons, he said his view could change.
“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Obama said. “That would change my calculus.”
“A whole bunch of chemical weapons”? ”A whole bunch”? Really? WTF constitutes “a whole bunch”? Is he saying to Assad that he can move around and use a few chemical weapons, as long as he doesn’t cross the “whole bunch” line? Wherever that is.
Excuse me while I go pound my head on the floor.
OK. Back now.
Look. There is a principle often invoked in foreign policy, and politics generally, of “constructive ambiguity.”
Jennifer Rubin watched also.
In an effort to soothe the increasingly peeved White House press corps, the president appeared in the White House Briefing Room today to take a few questions. It was a remarkably ineffective performance, which the White House must hope that few people watched.
Among other untruths, the president insisted, “Nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon.” Well, other than deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. With regard to his super PAC ad claiming that Mitt Romney, in effect, killed a woman, President Obama maintained, “I don’t think Governor Romney is somehow responsible for the death of the woman that was portrayed in that ad. But keep in mind, this is an ad that I didn’t approve, I did not produce, and as far as I can tell, has barely run. I think it ran once.” Well, except the woman’s husband, Joe Soptic, was trotted out for an Obama campaign press conference.
Even more ludicrous was Obama’s answer on welfare reform. …
Rubin says if Obama’s claims he is not negative were true, he could do the following;
… So what could Obama do if he really wanted to raise the debate? He could fire Stephanie Cutter. (Throwing overboard aides who merely followed directions is a tried-and-true political tactic.) He could denounce the Soptic ad. He could introduce his own reforms on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He could even embrace Simpson-Bowles. It’s not too late for that. Certainly this would dispel the notion that he is unserious about the fiscal debt, is unwilling to take on his own party and is interested only in growing the size of government. He could even undo the damage wrought by his welfare maneuver. (Mickey Kaus has some good suggestions including, “Have Obama argue that the new waivers were justified, but regret that they weren’t adopted with the bipartisan consultation he thinks would produce a reasonable consensus around the need for a modest amount of state-by-state flexibility and experimentation. In keeping with this sentiment, have HHS secretary Sebelius withdraw the rules until they can be negotiated in 2013 with Congressional Republicans, which (Obama can say) will certainly insure that the work requirements are not, in fact, eroded.”)
But I don’t think Obama wants to or is capable of doing any of that. He has spent no time developing farsighted policies, and he is determined to prove that he can turn out his base with fire and brimstone speeches and attack ads. His sycophantic spinners will have to live with that reality. This is precisely the sort of pol whom Obama warned us about in 2008.
Andrew Malcolm says don’t believe this presser was a spur of the moment thing.
“Looks like there’s a surprise guest here,” said Obama press secretary Jay Carney, sounding not the least bit surprised.
Indeed, his boss took the podium in the White House briefing room Monday to make a statement and then answer a few questions (scroll down for full text). But there was as much surprise to this abbreviated Q&A as the Chicago River turning green on St. Patrick’s Day.
Here’s how it works in this president’s communications strategy:
He hasn’t taken questions from Washington beat reporters in two months. Why? Because he doesn’t want to answer carefully-crafted questions about the economy, the lousy unemployment rates among key sectors of voters like women, blacks and youths, the stunning tastelessness of the ads supporting his candidacy and why he’s fallen so far behind the Republican ticket in recent money-raising. …
Tuesday we gleefully led with Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek cover piece titled “Hit the Road, Barack.” Well, the left blogosphere went nuts over the Harvard history prof’s treatment of St. Barack. Ferguson doubles down in the Daily Beast. The left crazies are going to wish they left him alone. It is better than his first effort. A nice way to start the weekend.
The other day, a British friend asked me if there was anything about the United States I disliked. I was happily on vacation and couldn’t think of anything. But now I remember. I really can’t stand America’s liberal bloggers.
“We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Lord Macaulay famously wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” But the spectacle of the American liberal blogosphere in one of its almost daily fits of righteous indignation is not so much ridiculous as faintly sinister. Why? Because what I have encountered since the publication of my Newsweek article criticizing President Obama looks suspiciously like an orchestrated attempt to discredit me.
My critics have three things in common. First, they wholly fail to respond to the central arguments of the piece. Second, they claim to be engaged in “fact checking,” whereas in nearly all cases they are merely offering alternative (often silly or skewed) interpretations of the facts. Third, they adopt a tone of outrage that would be appropriate only if I had argued that, say, women’s bodies can somehow prevent pregnancies in case of “legitimate rape.”
Their approach is highly effective, and I must remember it if I ever decide to organize an intellectual witch hunt. What makes it so irksome is that it simultaneously dodges the central thesis of my piece and at the same time seeks to brand me as a liar. The icing on the cake has been the attempt by some bloggers to demand that I be sacked not just by Newsweek but also by Harvard University, where I am a tenured professor. It is especially piquant to read these demands from people who would presumably defend academic freedom in the last ditch—provided it is the freedom to publish opinions in line with their own ideology.
Let me begin by restating my argument. President Obama should be judged on his record in office. In my view, he has not only failed to live up to the high expectations of those who voted for him, but also to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. (In order to be fair, I deliberately did not judge his performance against his campaign pledges.) The economy has performed less well than the White House led us to expect, despite a bigger increase in national debt than it led us to expect (exhibit 1). …
… Now, we come to the third part of the strategy. First, duck the argument. Second, nitpick. Third, vilify.
First prize goes to Berkeley professor Brad DeLong, whose blog opened with the headline “Fire-His-Ass-Now.” “He lied,” rants DeLong. “Convene a committee at Harvard to examine whether he has the moral character to teach at a university.” My own counter-suggestion would be to convene a committee at Berkeley to examine whether or not Professor DeLong is spending too much of his time blogging when he really should be conducting serious research or teaching his students. For example, why hasn’t Professor DeLong published that economic history of the 20th century he’s been promising for the past six years? It can’t be writer’s block, that’s for sure.
Runner up is James Fallows of The Atlantic for his hilariously pompous post “As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize.” Well, as an Oxford alum, I laugh.
In third place comes Krugman with his charge of “unethical commentary … a plain misrepresentation of the facts” requiring “an abject correction.” The idea of getting a lesson from Paul Krugman about the ethics of commentary is almost as funny as Fallows’s apologizing on behalf of Harvard. Both these paragons of the commentariat, by the way, shamelessly accused me of racism three years ago when I drew an innocent parallel between President Obama and “Felix the Cat.” I don’t know of many more unethical tricks than to brand someone who criticizes the president a racist.
And, finally, a consolation prize for righteous indignation goes to Dylan Byers of Politico (“ridiculous, misleading, ethically questionable”).
I could, of course, go on. By tonight there will doubtless be more. The art of the modern witch hunt is to get as many like-minded bloggers as possible to repeat and preferably exaggerate the claims until finally it becomes received opinion that you are on the brink of being fired and indeed deported in chains.
I don’t usually waste time on this kind of thing. In the Internet age, you can spend one week writing a piece and the next three responding to criticism, most of it (as we have seen) worthless.
But there comes a point when you have to ask yourself: has the American public sphere so degenerated that it is now impossible to make the case for a change of president without being set upon in cyberspace by a suspiciously well-organized gang of the current incumbent’s most ideologically committed supporters?
Now that really would be something to dislike about this country.
So how is Fauxcahontas doing in her campaign in Massachusetts? Michael Graham brings us up to date.
Does Liz Warren really believe that Scott Brown is pro-rape? Or wants to somehow “redefine rape” in a way that would hurt women or benefit racists?
Of course not.
But is Liz Warren willing to smear Scott Brown by suggesting he’d do all this — and more — as part of a “war on women?”
She already has.
The first Massachusetts Senate candidate to denounce Missouri moron Todd Akin was Scott Brown. Liz Warren’s denunciations, along with pretty much the entire Western world’s, soon followed.
Of course Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Scott Brown denounced Akin’s idiocy. There is no “legitimate rape” caucus anywhere in American politics.
“Scott Brown and other Republicans want to pretend Todd Akin is an isolated individual, but he is clearly in line with the Republican agenda,” Warren said in a statement.
And what, according to Warren, is that agenda?
“To limit access to health care. . . to select a vice presidential nominee someone who co-sponsored legislation with Rep. Akin to ‘redefine rape,’ ” Warren says.
Got that, ladies? Forget Brown’s record, forget his denunciation of this Akin dope, forget how he’s actually lived his entire life: Scott Brown hates women! He’s soft on rape! Run before he molests you himself!
This is how low Liz Warren is willing to go, how much of her own dignity she’s willing to destroy, just to — as her campaign put it in a fundraising mailer — “win back Ted Kennedy’s seat.”
Ah, yes, Ted Kennedy. The exemplar of the virtuous treatment of women . . .