WASHINGTON — It was precisely February 4, 2009 when I broke my
self-imposed rule. It was not a very old rule, but it was
serious. I had told myself that I would not criticize the new
president of the United States, Barack Obama — at least not for
a few more months. But I slipped up. I could not completely
swallow the fact that a community action leader with almost no
experience at the national level had become president. There were
already complaints coming in from foreign parts. The Indians
warned against his sticking his nose into their dispute with
Pakistan over Kashmir, and to the President’s offer of talks with
Iran, a low-level spokesman, Mr. Gholam Hossein Elham, replied:
“This means Western ideology has become passive.”
Yet since those halcyon days the flubs and near disasters
have gotten worse. They have gotten worse for two reasons. To
begin with, there is the experience factor. President Barack
Obama is less experienced than any modern president, and I am not
sure he has had any more experience than any president, period.
Maybe Millard Fillmore was less experienced. I shall research the
matter and report my findings,
Now think about what this means. He has had no experience
in foreign affairs, intelligence gathering, the workings of the
treasury, or any other aspect of the federal government. He does
not know how to deal with a gigantic oil spill or, come to think
of it, a small one. We are left thanking the stars in the heavens
that this president has Joe Biden at his side! Maybe we are even
reassured that Rahm Emanual is there, if one does not mind a
sharp elbow in the ribs, and David Axelrod and someone by the
name of Valerie Jarrett can be counted on to keep watch
while this president flies off to foreign parts.
Second, Mr. Obama is wedded to the politics of the far
left. He thinks because there is someone to the farther left of
him that means that he is a moderate. But as things stand there
are people to the right of him too. As I see it, there are at
least three quarters of the American people to the right of him,
possibly more. These people matter. It probably was imprudent of
him to go to the baseball game last weekend even if the Chicago
White Sox were playing. And the next day he should not have
played golf, even if Joe Biden came along. Not even if Saul
Alinsky wrote about golf back in the 1960s.
There is something very dated about the ideology that this
president takes so seriously. The progressives thought they were
electing a forward looker. They were getting an antique merchant.
In fact, they are antique merchants. Even the Chinese
and the Indians think Mr. Obama is backward. The Canadians’ view
of the world is light years beyond him. Now even his supporters
are beginning to talk. The president is dangerously out of touch
and he is incompetent.
The other day Mortimer Zuckerman wrote an ominous piece. In
U.S. News & World Report he cited widespread talk in
Britain of the end of our “special relationship” with that
country. He cited French President Nicolas Sarkozy speaking ill
of Mr. Obama and he noted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s
contempt for a number of our president’s views. Mr. Zuckerman
went on to cite problems that the president had had with China,
Middle Eastern leaders, particularly the King of Saudi Arabia,
and Turkey and Brazil. Of course, in his tour de horizon
he mentioned Mr. Obama’s problems with Cuba, Iran, and North
Korea. Then he said it: “a critical mass of influential people in
the world” are “no longer dazzled by his rock star personality
and there is a sense that there is something amateurish and even
incompetent about how Obama is managing U.S. power.”
Now I have not always been an admirer of Mr. Zuckerman, but
there is something solid about his piece. He wrote it clearly
worried about the path that lies ahead and when he spoke of that
“critical mass of ‘influential people” he knew what he was
writing]about. This is why official Washington is taking a fresh
look at Joe Biden. They note his gaffable presence, but they are
clearly fortified by his presence. After all, who else is there,
Axelrod, Emanuel, and Jarrett?
