Compare and Contrast

I really do have to give credit to President Obama for ordering a unilateral ground raid into Pakistan without bothering to get Islamabad's permission. Even better was the order to kill Osama bin Laden rather than "arrest" him to bring him out for some international UN-sanctioned tribunal to try him in a court. No, we just iced him and dumped his body. Sure, we washed his body and wrapped him in white cloth, but that might have consisted of hosing his carcass over the side with fire hoses after letting crew graffiti the white cloth with appropriate goodbyes (I don't really think that happened, but no matter that we claim this was done in accordance with Moslem practices, this was hardly the spirit of the law if nothing else, and I don't care anyway).

This presidential decision, admittedly gutsy, does not erase my unease with the president, even though I repeatedly write that I do support some of the things the president does and that I am relieved he is not as bad as I feared he would be on war issues. On domestic affairs, I am very unhappy, however.

It occurred to me that I am happiest with President Obama in the areas where Obama follows Bush policies in war issues that I supported then (even if today they might be just a shadow of them and done without apparent resolve since much of what the president does now was damned by his base when Bush did them as Iowahawk so amusingly sends up) and I am most upset with President Obama where he follows Bush policies or impulses in the domestic realm, which is how I see Obama spending and policy initiatives. Yes, in scale the current initiatives dwarf Bush spending and government intrusion into our lives and take place in a time when we can afford them even less. The Bush emphasis on "compassionate" conservatism always seemed like liberalism lite in practice.

So there you go. I am happiest with Obama where his policies are most like Bush's--but worried Obama just goes through the motions without really feeling like a war president. And I'm most unhappy with Obama in domestic issues where he is most like Bush--but worried that Obama has accelerated such policies to a degree that can bankrupt us.

For Bush, his positives on foreign policy (and my basic trust I had in him) outweighed my reservations about his domestic policies.

For Obama, I'm horrified by his domestic policies but my tentative relief over his foreign policy does not outweigh my horror over domestic issues because of the scale of that horror and because I have little trust in President Obama's resolve to finish what he is pursuing now in many war-related areas.

For what it's worth, there you go.