No one can say it better than Peggy Noonan.
A serious foreign-policy intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem
is that he’s a Russian leader in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he
can really negotiate with, a stone player who can talk grand strategy
and the needs of his nation, someone with whom he can thrash it through
and work it out. Instead he has Obama, a self-besotted charismatic who
can’t tell the difference between showbiz and strategy, and who enjoys
unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers.
By the way, as regular readers know, from the beginning I have called the Syrian Missile Crisis the current president's "Cuban Missile Crisis." From Peggy Noonan:
It is that Syria was not a self-made mess, an example of historic
incompetence. It was Obama’s Cuban Missile Crisis—high-stakes,
eyeball-to-eyeball, with weapons of mass destruction and an implacable
foe. The steady waiting it out, the inner anguish, the idea that
crosses the Telex that seems to soften the situation. A cool,
calibrated, chancy decision to go with the idea, to make a measured
diplomatic concession. In the end it got us through the crisis.
Really, they’re going to say this. And only in part because this
White House is full of people who know nothing—really nothing—about
history. They’ve only seen movies.
The only question is who plays Bobby. Get ready for a leak war between Kerry’s staff and Hillary Clinton’s.
The nod goes to Kerry. He was in the office, not Hillary; she has retired.
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