On the bright side, President Obama has grown in office regarding war policy. This has had the added bonus of making the Democrats who howled in the fevers of Bush Derangement Syndrome grit their teeth and moan amongst themselves as President Obama has validated one Bush foreign policy and national security initiative after another. Libya is the crowning moment of left-wing brain lock. Hanson puts it well:
The Left, as I said, was humiliated, since its former criticism of Iraq had lived on the principle that George Bush had precipitously taken us to war against a Middle East oil-producing nation and now died with the principle that Barack Obama far more precipitously took us to war against a Middle East oil-producing nation. Worse still, Libya occurred amid a series of Obama flip-flops that cemented the notion of a partisan rather than principled Left: as vociferous in its criticism of President Bush’s Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, Predators, Patriot Act, intercepts, wiretaps, Iraq presence, and preventive detention as it was abruptly silent once President Obama embraced, or indeed trumped, all these policies and protocols.
Hanson argues that hypocrisy charges don't work the other way because we had serious interests and clear objectives in Iraq, in contrast to Libya. He surely has a point, especially on objectives; and on interests, he is also right. But that doesn't mean we have no interests in Libya. We have an interest in retribution against a past enemy with American blood on his hands. We have an interest in making sure Khaddafi is not the firewall against the spread of the Arab Spring. And we have an interest in helping treaty allies who do have greater interests in Libya's outcome (preserving oil flows and preventing refugee flows).
Yet early on in his presidency, I suspected that President Obama would swing right on many foreign policy issues to avoid short-term complications as he sought to vault America to the left domestically in his window of opportunity after sweeping the executive and legislative branches in 2008. On domestic matters, I do think the president is close enough to being a socialist for government work, so to speak. Not communist, mind you. I have no doubt he is an American and believes he is helping us all by reforming our largely capitalist system. But he is in the mold of a European social democrat who wants to greatly expand the federal government's role in the economy and in our daily lives.
So this will make my choice in 2012 more difficult than you might think it would. We're a great country. We'll survive even an Obama presidency in the long run. We have enduring strengths despite talk of our decline. And my primary interest, as this blog shows, is in war and foreign policy.
What do I do if it looks like Congress can block further expansion of federal power over our lives and if the Supreme Court strikes down some of the more onerous expansions already done even if Congress can't muster the votes? Normally, it would be easy to vote against President Obama. But what if, keeping the above legislative and judicial factors in mind, the Republicans nominate a candidate who is an isolationist on foreign policy, equally prone as Obama to expanding the role of the federal government, or just a freaking idiot? What do I do if I can count on a re-elected President Obama being stymied or reversed on his domestic policies that I oppose while carrying on the somewhat surprising changes on core war issues?
And this doesn't even address the probably small chance that someone from the left of Obama on foreign policy could win the primary contest. If President Carter couldn't be defeated in the primaries from the left, what hope do leftists have that Kucinich or Dean could do the job?
I still have great concerns on President Obama's foreign policy on non-core war issues--Honduras, border defense, missile defense, Israel, and Russia come to mind--and so don't fully trust his motives, as I did with President George W. Bush even when I disagreed with policies. But you go to the polls with the candidates that you have and not the candidates that you wish you had. And I refuse to take the easy way out and stay home, invoking a pox on both parties for delivering less-than-ideal candidates. We shall see who the candidates are in 2012.
UPDATE: When I listened to the basic dishonesty of the president's fiscal speech today, I could just about resolve to vote even for Trump if he is the alternative. Honestly, I build more sympathy for the president's challenges the longer he is away from the cameras. His partisanship on any issue is depressing.
