May 8th 2009
President Charming Or The Grim Obama?
Debra Burlingame, who would not wish to be the voice of the 9/11 families but has proven to be very powerful in that role, has pegged the Obama strategy perfectly in a WSJ op/ed today:
The Obama team has established a pattern that should be plain for all to see. When controversy erupts or legitimate policy differences are presented by well-meaning people, send out the celebrity president to flatter and charm.
Burlingame witnessed it firsthand at the infamous White House meeting with the families of the USS Cole victims in the first days of the Obama presidency, where President Charming assured the families the bad guys would get “swift and certain justice” – a phrase subsequently ballyhooed by the White House media machine. The experience that followed, of course, was different. Terrorists were released or promised trials in which their time served in Guantanamo would be counted against their ultimate sentence, and through which our enemy would gain access to classified information. Burlingame recounts:
Mr. Obama was urged to consult with prosecutors who have actually tried terrorism cases and warned that bringing unlawful combatants into the federal courts would mean giving our enemies classified intelligence — as occurred in the cases of the al Qaeda cell that carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and conspired to bomb New York City landmarks with ringleader Omar Abdel Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh.” In the Rahman case, a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators given to the defense — they were entitled to information material to their defense — was in Osama bin Laden’s hands within hours. It told al Qaeda who among them was known to us, and who wasn’t.
Mr. Obama responded flatly, “I’m the one who sees that intelligence. I don’t want them to have it, either. We don’t have to give it to them.”
Flattery and charm notwithstanding, is he smoking crack? Did he forget America is under the rule of law, and what the president may want or not want has little or nothing to do with rules of evidence, trial procedures, and judge’s rulings. Obama has made it clear in his swift closing of Guantanamo that he intends to view terrorism as a crime, not an act of war, and he knows, as a lawyer, that when the terrorists’ attorneys start to request evidence, the U.S. will have a choice: Provide it at risk of our national security, or face a mistrial at risk of our national security.
But he just charms and flatters and the Dumbo press corps plays along and the enthralled American public gets woozy with love.
President Charming has played this game so much already you’d think America would have tired of it … but then what season is this for ER? The 112th? He’s flattered and charmed us about the stimulus package and the auto bailouts. After lynching the CIA over interrogation techniques, he showed up at Langley and turned on the charm, even as his justice department was fine-tuning the legal waterboarding that would follow for some of those involved in the process.
The President Charming routine has become something of a political Grim Reaper act. Look out the peephole in your front door and see a smiling President Obama there, poised and prone to get all sympathetic and compassionate with you, and run for the hills. You’re about to get screwed.
Art: Radioactive Liberty. You might want to click that link – it’s a wonderful election time parody of voting in the Obama era, nicely set to the rythms of Poe’s the Raven. Excerpt:
On tattered vest wore he a tag, all but obscured by shoulder bag
One word it read, it said ‘Acorn’, only Acorn and nothing more
He handed me a pamphlet printed, could smell the ink so freshly minted
Reading, ‘Correct choices must be made in this chore’
Wicked Acorn, you’ll not aid my honored chore!
“Get away from me,” I shouted, “I beseeched you once before”
Posted in Obama Drama | 1 Comment » | |
Trackbacks/Pings
Leave a Reply
[The "Comment Box" is WYSIWYG except that you have to double space between paragraphs!
Type it the way you want it to look -- Just remember to double up those line spaces.]
You must be logged in to post a comment.
May 8th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Comments