by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n When Barack Obama went into hibernation in December and vacationed in Hawaii, we noted that his poll numbers edged back up some. His advisers probably noticed the anomaly too: that the less the people hear and see of Obama, the more they seem to like the abstract idea of Obama \u2014 a young, charismatic postracial president. The reality of Obama is something else again: a highly partisan, divisive statist, who cannot finish a speech without blaming his predecessor, mangling history, or creating yet another straw-man bogeyman. The difficulty, then, is to convince the loquacious and crowd-adoring Obama to focus instead on private fundraisers, photo-ops, sporting events, and teleprompted studio speeches. He looks a lot more presidential when he\u2019s golfing than he does when he\u2019s giving yet another whiny speech about why high gas prices are somebody else\u2019s fault and not drilling is sound energy policy.<\/p>\n Similarly, Obama realizes that the legislation he pushed for and that passed in the two years the Democrats controlled Congress before the tea-party revolt grows increasingly more unpopular. In any case, Obama is not keen on running for reelection on Obamacare or his stimulus package, given that his sinking polls bottomed out once the Republicans won the House and stopped much of his agenda. Somehow Obama must square the circle of blaming the Republican House for derailing the unpopular agenda of his first two years in office, and thereby giving him a far better chance for reelection.<\/p>\n Obama now also realizes that such a run-out-the-clock passivity might be even wiser abroad. It is one of life\u2019s real injustices that the White House Rose Garden cannot be ripped out for a putting green, from which the world could better be waved on. The controversial outreach and reset diplomacy of 2009 are pass\u00e9. There will be no more laureate speeches and interviews about an arrogant America of the pre-Obama past not listening to the Muslim world. Cairo speeches are the stuff of 2009, not 2012. Apologies for genocide and Hiroshima are ancient history. Ahmadinejad and Assad were not just creations of George Bush\u2019s unilateralism. There will be no more bows, no more exclusive interviews with\u00a0Al Arabiya<\/em>. There will be no new deadlines to Iran to really, really stop enrichment \u2014 or else.<\/p>\n Instead, Obama hopes that international sanctions can sort of run on autopilot without either Iran getting the bomb or anyone using force to stop it. There will be no more sermons to Israel, at least until after November. Britain is now to be courted rather than to be snubbed with tawdry gifts, and there is indeed still a special Anglo-American friendship after all. Foreign policy in the next half-year will mostly consist of frequent visits of heads of state to the White House and lavish state dinners.<\/p>\n Iraq is out of sight and out of mind; it will be no more than a campaign slogan of having \u201cgotten the troops home for Christmas.\u201d Afghanistan is important only to the extent that there can be a campaign promise that all U.S. troops are set to be gone in less than two years. There is no expectation that a Putin, Ch\u00e1vez, or Castro will warm up to the US or should even be wished any more to warm up. Obama once gave a rousing speech proclaiming that America is not the sort of country that could let insurgents in Libya be crushed, but he realizes in 2012 that America, in fact, may be the sort of country that can let insurgents be crushed in Syria, given that our participation in Libya was predicated on facts quite unlike those in Syria: Qaddafi was weak; his country was strategically unimportant; the chances of American losses were slight; there was United Nations cover; Europeans were already at war with him \u2014 and the reelection was still far away.<\/p>\n In other words, after just three years, there is a quiet concession that the world remains, well, the world, whether a Texan cowboy or a Chicago community organizer is the president of the United States. Obama\u2019s chief foreign-policy aim now is to hope that nothing much flares up before the November election \u2014 at least as long as the race still seems to be tight. In the current political climate of growing isolationism at home, that means more or less putting Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan on ice, and hoping that Israel does not strike Iran\u2019s facilities sometime within the next seven months.<\/p>\n We are in a period of quiet acknowledgment that Obama\u2019s 2009 dreams of a world tamed by hope-and-change rhetoric from a post-national American critic remain largely fantasies; we can only hope that there will be no nightmares in 2012. Obama is not quite Jimmy Carter, who retreated to the Rose Garden for the campaign of 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis in hopes of seeming engaged while actually being flummoxed and disengaged, but he has adopted the same spirit \u2014 a virtual Rose Garden of appearing busy and on top of things, while doing little abroad that could cause turmoil, which in turn could lead to unpopularity at home over yet another messy and costly Middle East commitment.<\/p>\n In matters of foreign policy, the challenge for Obama is to campaign on all the important things he is dreaming of doing abroad, when in reality he is counting on doing nothing much at all \u2014 and on no one doing much of anything to him.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online When Barack Obama went into hibernation in December and vacationed in Hawaii, we noted that his poll numbers edged back up some.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[362],"tags":[12,1026,1055,88,40,160],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-eh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6860,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/vdh-quoted-in-barack-obamas-past-as-murky-as-his-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":0},"title":"VDH Quoted In, “Barack Obama’s past as murky as his word”","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jack Kelly \/\/\u00a0The Pittsburgh Press\u00a0 Onyango \u201cOmar\u201d Obama, 69, half-brother of Barack Obama Sr., came to the United States on a student visa in 1963, remained here illegally after it expired, was ordered to leave the U.S. in 1986, 1989 and 1992, but ignored the deportation orders. After Onyango\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":392,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-game-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":1},"title":"The Game Changes","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama\u2019s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":2},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2736,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/reelecting-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":3},"title":"Reelecting Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We are beginning to see the contours of the upcoming 2012 reelection campaign of Barack Obama. Whether always officially sanctioned or not, Obama\u2019s campaign will focus on three general themes: a) the 2008 meltdown of the economy on Bush\u2019s watch; b) conservative heartlessness\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":4},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-racial-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":885,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s Racial Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Never has America been more assimilated, integrated, and intermarried \u2014 as is evident in everything from politics to popular culture, from statistics to anecdotes. Yet from late 2007 to 2012, Barack Obama has been establishing new rules of racial referencing. 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