The rejection of Chicago as the site for the 2016 this week represents the latest setback for the Obama administration. With as many domestic and foreign challenges facing this administration, I was frankly surprised that the administration decided to spend political capital to attempt to snare the Olympics for Chicago. The city itself was divided as to whether it really wanted the games. After nine months on the job, Obama’s star power was beginning to show signs of wear and he needed a win at this juncture. It seemed to me that the Olympic push had only small upside potential and large downside risk for the president. And alas, after a personal plea by Obama, the Olympic committee promptly scratched Chicago after the first round.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a major blow to the administration, but on a closer look it is deeply symbolic of what is wrong with this administration and does not portend well for the immediate future of his administration. Here’s why.
Obama has come an astonishingly long way on rhetoric. His golden tongue was super b in rallying the faithful during the election. At a time when the country was in a state of fright over its fracturing financial system and exhausted from its war in Iraq, Obama’s cool demeanor and mantra of hope and change and high sounding ideals had pundits swooning. At the inauguration, they immediately began drawing analogies between Obama and FDR and Lincoln. We wanted to believe.
There is an ocean of difference, however, between giving a speech and spouting ideals and actually getting things done. The missing ingredient in Obama’s background is negotiating experience. He has none. No one has been able to tell me exactly what he accomplished as a community organizer. He had no legislative accomplishments to his credit. And certainly being a lecturer to a bunch of 20 somethings does not give you one iota of experience at negotiating. Making a case is one thing. Controlling events and negotiating for the support of other key players is another.
As a result, we are beginning to see this administration grind to a halt. It was naked and exposed for all to see during the UN meeting last week. In very lofty and idyllic terms, Obama spoke about the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, a high minded ideal about which there is little disagreement. Yet, the very next day, when faced with the actual, real concrete evidence of the crazed mullahs in Iran blatantly ignoring the West with incontrovertible evidence that their nuclear weapons program is humming along, Obama seemed disjointed and out of step with our European allies. Britain and France both spoke about “lines in the sand” and deadlines. Obama mumbled something about Iran “having to live up to its international obligations.”
This was the perfect forum to present a pre-negotiated orchestrated united front to Iran. After all, we had only the week before given the Russians a huge concession by scuttling our plans to put missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.
But the only concrete action we received from others was a commitment by Iran to talk about the program, and by Russia to consider sanctions (not commit to them, mind you, but to commit to consider them). Iran promptly fired off a bunch of missiles just to let us know what they think of all this.
This is all symptomatic of an individual and an administration that has no experience in getting things accomplished. Obama much prefers grandious speeches to the hard, grinding work of negotiating and making deals. In the health care reform push, Obama’s efforts have been to ramp up the speaking circuit. Obama believes that if he just says it often enough and in an eloquent enough fashion, people will see the sense in it. But the art of getting things done involves getting people to do things they don’t really want to do. It involves cajoling, bribing, threatening, pushing at many levels to get what needs to be done. And it needs to be done in a coordinated fashion with nothing left to chance.
The issues we face with Iran are deadly serious. We failed to stop North Korea from getting the bomb. And now we are arguably faced with the most odious regime since the Nazis on the brink of becoming a nuclear power. The actions of the West over the next twelve months could easily change the history of the world. It is time to stop campaigning and get to work.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a major blow to the administration, but on a closer look it is deeply symbolic of what is wrong with this administration and does not portend well for the immediate future of his administration. Here’s why.
Obama has come an astonishingly long way on rhetoric. His golden tongue was super b in rallying the faithful during the election. At a time when the country was in a state of fright over its fracturing financial system and exhausted from its war in Iraq, Obama’s cool demeanor and mantra of hope and change and high sounding ideals had pundits swooning. At the inauguration, they immediately began drawing analogies between Obama and FDR and Lincoln. We wanted to believe.
There is an ocean of difference, however, between giving a speech and spouting ideals and actually getting things done. The missing ingredient in Obama’s background is negotiating experience. He has none. No one has been able to tell me exactly what he accomplished as a community organizer. He had no legislative accomplishments to his credit. And certainly being a lecturer to a bunch of 20 somethings does not give you one iota of experience at negotiating. Making a case is one thing. Controlling events and negotiating for the support of other key players is another.
As a result, we are beginning to see this administration grind to a halt. It was naked and exposed for all to see during the UN meeting last week. In very lofty and idyllic terms, Obama spoke about the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, a high minded ideal about which there is little disagreement. Yet, the very next day, when faced with the actual, real concrete evidence of the crazed mullahs in Iran blatantly ignoring the West with incontrovertible evidence that their nuclear weapons program is humming along, Obama seemed disjointed and out of step with our European allies. Britain and France both spoke about “lines in the sand” and deadlines. Obama mumbled something about Iran “having to live up to its international obligations.”
This was the perfect forum to present a pre-negotiated orchestrated united front to Iran. After all, we had only the week before given the Russians a huge concession by scuttling our plans to put missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic.
But the only concrete action we received from others was a commitment by Iran to talk about the program, and by Russia to consider sanctions (not commit to them, mind you, but to commit to consider them). Iran promptly fired off a bunch of missiles just to let us know what they think of all this.
This is all symptomatic of an individual and an administration that has no experience in getting things accomplished. Obama much prefers grandious speeches to the hard, grinding work of negotiating and making deals. In the health care reform push, Obama’s efforts have been to ramp up the speaking circuit. Obama believes that if he just says it often enough and in an eloquent enough fashion, people will see the sense in it. But the art of getting things done involves getting people to do things they don’t really want to do. It involves cajoling, bribing, threatening, pushing at many levels to get what needs to be done. And it needs to be done in a coordinated fashion with nothing left to chance.
The issues we face with Iran are deadly serious. We failed to stop North Korea from getting the bomb. And now we are arguably faced with the most odious regime since the Nazis on the brink of becoming a nuclear power. The actions of the West over the next twelve months could easily change the history of the world. It is time to stop campaigning and get to work.
"The most odious regime since the Nazis"? Where, then, would the Khmer Rouge fit? How about Idi Amin? Castro? Pinochet? How about the numerous apartheid regimes in South Africa? And speaking of North Korea, how about North Korea? And of course we are forgetting about Saddam's regime and any number of other African regimes (Charles Taylor in Liberia? Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe? to name just a couple). All some pretty odious regimes in my estimation. And all since the Nazis. If you cast aside the inconsequential idiot Ahmadinejad, all one is really left with in Iran is a disagreement -- albeit a rather large one -- with a country tightly controlled by Muslim clerics. Taking the religion out of the equation, their rule is no more "odious" than any of those mentioned above, and far less odious than many.
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