Dmitri Medvedev in Lisbon a marked contrast to Putin’s last turn. Sestanovich gets it about right.
Obama As Poker Player: He Really Does Have A ‘Tell’
The United States, obviously, has a special role to play on the international stage, regardless of who is president,” Mr. Obama said. “We are a very large, very wealthy, very powerful country. We have had outsized influence over world affairs for a century now. And you are now seeing a situation in which a whole host of other countries are doing very well and coming into their own, and naturally they are going to be more assertive in terms of their interests and ideas. And that’s a healthy thing.
Obama on getting stiffed at the G20. He lacks Clinton’s gift for often inspired parsing. Rather than embed meaning within meaning, Obama’s efforts actually draw attention. Note the past tense passive construct ‘We have had outsized influence’ stands out. No different than the WH’s correction of Axelrod’s cave on the Bush tax cuts. The WH quickly instructed him and others to claim he was misunderstood. Obama, they claim, is true to principle. Just that principle (ahem) is opposition to *permanently* extending Bush’s plutocratic wealth transfer subsidy. Don’t forget the military’s leaking that Obama’s hard deadline of 2011 Afghan draw down is now floated as December 31, 2014 (for now).
And that’s just in the last week.
Now put yourself in Beijing’s place. Or any G-20 leader sitting at the plenary session. Imagine your briefing on Obama before you arrived in Korea. You, like many leaders from Japan, Germany, China, Korea, etc. built your wealth and social stability on merchantilist predation on U.S. consumers and debt. And here comes yet another American president complaining that his country is tired of being a consumption and debt junkie. ‘Beijing has to stop manipulating its currency boosting its smack’, etc.
Stronger men than Obama have gone to the pusher man. Most successfully Baker’s coup de main in 1985’s Plaza Accords. But then Baker knows how to play poker. His velvet hammer commanded respect.
Obama’s not that guy. Your briefing as a G-20 leader explains America’s too strung out now to handle the merchantilist product for much longer. The Fed QE easing/asset purchase doesn’t really threaten American inflating their way out of addicition. It’s more of an accounting measure for banks to re-configure their existing portfolios. But no American really understands that, especially CNBC reporters. So, your briefers advise, a few PR releases denouncing the move are meaningless but knock the young American off stride.
It’s all so inconvenient. You’ve been so focused on perfecting your labs and recruiting your mules like WalMart getting tastes of your junk into the American ‘tragedy of the commons’. You’re not used to thinking about responsibility, creating stable win-win international systems. Yours is the zero-sum game of wealth accumulation. Now you’ve got to think about what you need from a post-American debt junkie world.
The American junkie was convenient for everyone. Still no need to act precipitously; America is so hollowed out now all they export really is tweets. Don’t risk siding with Obama now against the Yuan, your briefers caution. The future is in flux. He can’t stand up to Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Boehner, etc. Besides, he always screws his allies and flatters his foes. The guy just admitted U.S. diminishment in Asia, after all, where ‘face’ is all. And worse, it’s clear the Americans don’t have a plan for methadone/detox other than more speeches about ‘Green jobs’ or – wait for it – more tax cuts!!
Why not kick the can down a road? Milk the junkie. And see what happens. With Obama it’s obvious the deal always gets better by waiting him out. He’ll probably even end up calling his own initial position ‘outsized’, to boot.
Obama On Iraq: A Weak Speech By A Weak President
Oama’s speech on slinking out of Iraq positively pulsated with weakness. Not for reasons Rightist wing nuts might rage.
His content and delivery raise alarming implications about who really will control key American foreign policy decisions ahead: his hopey changey rhetoric or David Petraeus et al. Obama reveals he himself is unsure.
We don’t fault him on Iraq or the need to go through the motions of praising the catastrophe. He’s merely following the Bush timetable.
Our critique rests on how he handled the military in this delicate moment. We saw a young man unsure of his authority over the military and overcompensating clumsily. Think the proverbial step parent with the skeptical, hostile teenager stepchild. Attempts to lay down rules are mocked and the step parent’s role denied – openly or passively. That’s his military. He missed an opportunity to correct things before a national audience.
Slinking Out Of Iraq: Schlock And Yawn
Watching MSNBC’s breathless ‘exclusive’, ‘historic’ coverage of one portion of the U.S. military slither out of Iraq, you’d never know there was a ‘Bloom Mobile’ during the yahoo! invasion. You’d never know that MSNBC fired Phil Donahue for being vocally anti-war during the run up. In fact, MSNBC and NBC collectively completely airbrushed away their own culpability peddling the lies, falsehoods and propaganda that helped launch America’s modern day Syracuse Expedition.
MSNBC, like Oceania, has always been anti-war. So we get Tweety, who only stopped fluffing Neocons, DeLay et al. and the Administration in September 2006. MSNBC’s fabricated narrative is every bit as insidious and corruptive as that peddled by the Neocons and the Bush Administration. If the MSNBC third stringers want to pose and pretend they are going to hold people accountable, how about starting with their own network? Why is is that Tim Russert was Dick Cheney’s favorite (easiest) interview as Mary Matalin let slip? How many retired generals – oops, Senior Mentors — did MSNBC put on to explain how painless it was all going to be?
It’s a bit astounding to see Laurence O’Donnell – who, if you didn’t know, once was a staff director on a senate committee – repeatedly interrupt Jack Jacob’s military critique not just of the occupation but the half-assed and almost calamitous Rumsfeld/Franks invasion plan itself. (We’ve talked about the operational and logistical near disasters at length elsewhere). MSNBC is comfortable with that distinction – the ‘war’ went great (as all the then media cheerleaders still broadcasting need to believe) but the occupation was a bungle. Jacobs wasn’t having any of it but was cut off. Instead, we get a former Senate staffer babbling about how Americans vacation in Vietnam today, and wouldn’t it be nice if that happened too in a future Iraq. (By the way, Jacobs went to Vietnam after combat troops were withdrawn and saw combat every day; he is also is the first to underscore Vietnam is not Iraq re above).
The entire night was stunt journalism pornography at its worst, devoid almost entirely of real insight. No effort at all to put in context if this is the sad, pathetic end to the Warlord’s Operation Iraqi Excellent Adventure, what was MSNBC’s role in getting it going? Who did they put on air? Repeatedly? If MSNBC wants to be the Obama Administration’s version of Fox that’s their business and ethical call. The American people, however, rightly should and must remember MSNBC and those who so lustily shouted down doubt and criticism during the run-up.
We’re just going to say it a bluntly as we can: MSNBC, you, too, have blood on your hands. You’re just too mindless and irresponsible to notice.
Bob Gates’ Sacrificial Lambs: Thrown Aside To Preserve Perpetual Pentagon Overspending
We should reject Bob Gates’s pre-emptive effort to lock in future defense budget growth with his PR statement declaring $100 billion in DoD out year budget cuts. Don’t fall for the flare off the back of the jet. He’s throwing Congress and the public a few meaningless sacrifices. His admitted long term goal? It’s not to cut costs per se but justify permanent 1% increases from this year’s already record defense outlays. This stunt is political kabuki intended to head off real defense cuts by offering a Potemkin facade of budget discipline.
Will Americans be deceived by his PR sleight of hand? Probably.
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