Obama hat-in-hand to India

Perhaps the most potentially encouraging thing about Obama's 10-day trip to Asia just after the elections that left him a diminished character is that it is an unabashedly pro-trade, pro-commerce trip. As this Register editorial notes, contracts for Boeing and a few others were already in the works and will be available to make the trip look like a success. The 200+ corporate executives along for the ride may be good at what they do, but it's obviously not promoting a free marketplace. They would rather function as lickspittles of the government than true competitors competing openly and honestly for consumer preference, but let's face it, sucking up to the government can often be a profitable endeavor.

At any rate, it is healthy for Americans to see their president as a diminished character -- true of any president but perhaps especially this one, who has such a high estimation of himself, an estimation still shared by all too many of the chattering classes. People should note that now that the election is over, and there's no mileage to be gained by claiming to believe that foreign trade "ships jobs overseas," the president is out there promoting more foreign trade. He may not be doing it because he actually believes in free trade, but even his administration can see that more trade and more commerce eventually means more jobs here and overseas, which seems like a win-won to me.

The Obama backlash begins

I'm not sure whether or not this column ran on RealClearPolitics or some other Website, or whether people on the Eastern seaboard picked it up from the Register Website and sent me comments by e-mail, as several did. It did get recommended/shared 19 times on Facebook, so maybe that's where some of the hits came from.

Anyway, for the Register's Sunday Commentary section two days before the election I did a little column suggesting that Obama will be facing something closely resembling rejection tomorrow in large part because he and his henchmen misread the 2008 election results. I think a lot of voters actually believed the blarney about being a post-partisan president working with all and sundry to get things done. Instead, however, he told Republicans that "elections matter; I won," and embarked on an ambitious agenda that has proved unpopular -- and more unpopular the more people think about it. So his party will get some comeuppance tomorrow. How much -- and how much it might matter -- are still to be determined.

Why didn't Obama acknowledge citizen action?

I still think Obama adopted just about the right tone in his little talk about the undie bomber the other day. However, the word is that in the private meeting with his advisers he chewed them out and made it clear that the gummint had dodged a bullet largely because of citizens rather than the government. Too bad he didn't acknowledge this in his public talk. It almost seems as if he regrets spopntaneous action by ordinary citizens rather than celebrating it. If the government continues to act as if only the government can fix terrorism it will never be fixed -- well, maybe not never since terrorist activity almost always dies out after a while.

And of course, he's not close to taking the single most effec tive step toward safeguarding Americans, which would be to withdrawal military personnel from all Muslim countries as quickly as possible. But the commitment to "fixing" the world, which not only puts military people in harm's way but increases the danger to ordinary Americans, comes way ahead of what all presidents claim is their main duty, protecting the Amertican people from harm.

Health care deform stalled but . . .

Well, the public option and Medicare expansion now seem to be off the table, but as I suggested a couple of days ago, getting some kind of bill passed by the senate is still not a done deal. It's hard to imagine the Obama administration, which has plenty riding on being able to sign something, will allow the bill to die completely. Too bad.

As this Register editorial explains, what's left in the bills being considered now is still plenty bad. The major reason is the individual mandate, which Obama claimed to be against during the campaign, but force is the only thing government knows (indeed, the use of force pretty much defines government), so . . . With an individual mandate, however, as the editorial explains:

An individual mandate allows the government to control what kind of insurance you can buy, how much you will pay, how insurers pay doctors, how doctors work, how doctors practice medicine, and ultimately what kind of medical care you receive. It is a giant step toward complete government control over medical care.

Could it fail ignominiously? As time passes the polls turn more and more against it, which may explain some of the trouble in Congress, and the closer Democrats in normally Republican-leaning districts get to November the more reluctant they will be to back Obama on something that is becoming increasingly controversial. Abortion continues to be a sticky issue.

Still if I were a betting man I wouldn't bet against something getting passed.

Obama the cold one

For the most part I can take Maureen Dowd or leave her alone (in fact, it's remarkable that almost all of the regular NYT regular opinion columnists are such mediocrities -- they chose pretentious duds for their token conservatives as well). But she can be clever when she's biting -- she took Clinton's measure pretty well but was sometimes so angry at the Bushlet that she sputtered, which doesn't usually make for good writing. Still she's capable of seeing presidents fairly plainly, and I suspect she's starting to take Barack Obama's measure.

This column notes just how coldly Obama dealt with Gregory Craig, the frozen-out White House Counsel. Maureen would remember better than I just how much of a Clinton loyalist -- he honchoed the impeachment defense and had been friends since Yale Law -- Craig had been before he came out for Obama last year. Once on Obama's team, however, he savaged Hillary's claim to have significant foreign policy experience as a former Clinton insider. Put himself on the line for Barack. When he ran into trouble handling the Guantanamo situation, however, Obama simply froze him out further. Cold as could be. Maureen also notes that he did nothing to help Caroline Kennedy, who also put herself out for him during the campaign, when she was floundering around wondering whether or not to run for the senate.

Most politicians are loyal only to themselves, of course, but they usually try to be somewhat graceful. (My old UCLA prof Charles Titus defined politics as the art of getting what you want and making people like it). Obama has no grace.

Afghanistan not going well

Obama seems determined to try to prove he's a real player in the so-called "war on terror" by focusing on Afghanistan, but things are not going well there. As Anne Applebaum pointed out before the Aug. 20 presidential election, the important thing was that the result should appear legitimate. But that's not happening. Turnout was low, hardly any women voted, counting is going slowly, and there are credible allegations of election fraud by both the major candidates -- about 700 complaints an independent international monitoring body considers worthy of serious investigation. So far Karzai hasn't gotten the 50% he'll need to avoid a runoff. The government is still corrupt, no matter who wins.

Meanwhile Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, is turning in his report on strategy today, and while it hasn't been made public, the leaks so far suggest he'll call for a radical new strategy and (eventually) more U.S. troops. It's said he'll shift the emphasis from forays into Taliban strongholds to guarding cities and building up the Afghan government -- but it will be at least three years before Afghan security forces can handle the situation themselves. Meanwhile 51% of Americans and 70% of Democrats think the war isn't worth fighting. It's a potentially huge problem for Obama.

As I've written before, if the goal is to eliminate al-Qaida capabilities in Afghanistan, that's already done; al-Qaida is in Pakistan. So we should end military activities in Afghanistan and focus on an al-Qaida that had been notably weakened but may be stronger now in reaction to hyperactive US activity in the region. But Obama seems determined to prove he's tough in a country that is probably more challenging for outside forces than Iraq.

Cuban attitudes changing

As is usual with politicians, President Obama is following, not leading, on the issue of changing the U.S. relationship with Cuba. He lifted restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban-Americans and on remittances to relatives in Cuba, and gave U.S. telecoms to try to market in Cuba. As this Register editorial suggests, however, the group that has been most insistent on maintaining the economic embargo over the years, the Cuban American National Foundation, has shifted its stance. It is now officialy open to wide-ranging discussions on changing U.S. policy, up to and possibly including lifting the embargo. A recent poll of Cuban-Americans, by a firm that has been conducting them for decades, found 67% in favor of lifting all travel restrictions, and 43% declaring the embargo a "failure."

In other words, the voting bloc in Florida that has kept politicians of both parties from saying much about liberalizing relations with Cuba is within a few percentage points of being ready to dump the embargo. Younger Cuban-Americans favor liberalization solidly and that seems to be where the trend is. It is this fact rather than hope of "enlightened leadership" from Washington that makes me think the policies will be changed soon. Like most politicians, Obama has put his finger to the wind, and when he senses the dominant direction will run to the front of the pack saying "follow me; I'm leading now."

Iraq situation getting more dicey

Despite President Obama's expression of optimism on his trip to Baghdad -- guess he has taken full ownership of the war now -- things are starting to crumble there. In my column this week for Antiwar.com, I note discontent and more among the Sunni Awakening forces and the lack still of a real political resolution. It may be that Iraq is not meant to have a central government that isn't ruthless and repressive. Ivan Eland's new book, "Partitioning for Peace," is looking more and more constructive. Possibly the last best hope.

Obama's Afghan plan incoherent and dangerous

There has been a certain amount of criticism, but I'm mostly fascinated at just how supinely most Americans are responding to President Obama's "strategy" for Afghanistan. I suspect a certain degree of resignation is involved. We've become all too accustomed to the idea that the president can do whatever he damn well pleases, so few Americans bother complaining. I think very few people -- maybe a David Brooks, but he has an almost unblemished track record of being wrong, especially on foreign affairs -- actually believe this or any other likely strategy will "win" in Afghanistan or even have any notion of what "winning" would mean.

We probably won't see widespread protest until there's widespread coverage of U.S. futility, butAfghanistan is much larger and more mountainous than Iraq, therefore more difficult to cover (I'm re-reading Robert Kaplan's "Soldiers of God," about the mujahidin driving out the Soviets, which makes poignant poiints about how difficult it was then to do journalism.)

Well, the Register's editorial makes the appropriate points and suggests immediate demilitarization and a focus on al-Qaida rather than the Taliban. Will anybody pay ettentio?