As everyone knows, President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday night and reveal his decision on what to do in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Most weekend commentary focused on the announcement\u2019s political implications at home and how various players in and around Afghanistan will see it.\u00a0 But there will be another and in the long run at least as important audience: the political and diplomatic leaders of the major nations of the world.<\/p>\n
As reported at the time, during the last several months I have attended conferences and presentations in various European capitals.\u00a0 All in one way or another concerned global security.\u00a0 On the side I spoke with additional political and journalistic players.\u00a0 The result was a global snapshot of official and semi-official opinion from places as diverse as China, India, Russia, Palestine, and various parts of Europe, both in and out of the E.U.<\/p>\n
What I sensed in total was growing doubt about the president.\u00a0 He speaks well, everyone acknowledged, but is there substance behind the rhetoric?\u00a0 He is given to sweeping pronouncements.\u00a0 But will he, can he, follow through?\u00a0 He commands the most capable military force on the globe.\u00a0 But does he have the stomach for a fight?\u00a0 Does he have the strength to make and stick with hard choices, or any choice at all?\u00a0 As one globally prominent (and I would have thought friendly to the president) American journalist summed up global opinion at a conference in Geneva: \u201cMachiavelli said it is better to be feared than loved.\u00a0 Mr. Obama is loved.\u201d<\/p>\n
So when the president addresses the nation tomorrow night, he will be addressing these global players as well as the rest of us.\u00a0 How they grade his presentation will have a profound impact on what he and his administration will be able to achieve in international circles during the next three years.<\/p>\n
What we have learned so far about the speech and its substance is not encouraging.<\/p>\n
First, the speech itself: we have not yet heard it, of course.\u00a0 Drafting may not even have been completed.\u00a0 Different administrations work differently.\u00a0 In the Reagan Administration (where I was a speechwriter for the president), we never had the kind of cliffhanger, last-minute drafting dramas that seem to have been common in, say, the Clinton White House.\u00a0 Still, on major foreign policy speeches editing and even drafting by the president himself and appeals from various parts of the national security establishment could continue almost until Mr. Reagan stepped to the podium.\u00a0 When he returned from his meeting with Mr. Gorbachev in Reykjavik, President Reagan was writing in long hand, on a yellow pad, parts of his report to the nation within an hour of going on camera.<\/p>\n
But we do know one detail about Mr. Obama\u2019s speech, its location.\u00a0 Virtually all past major presidential addresses on global security matters have been broadcast from either the White House itself \u2013 usually the Oval Office \u2013 or the House of Representatives, as the president addressed a joint session of Congress.\u00a0 I am talking about all<\/span> presidential addresses here, not just recent ones but going back to Franklin Roosevelt.\u00a0 These settings convey majesty.\u00a0 They convey the seriousness of the moment and weight of the Constitutional office the man occupies.\u00a0 When addressing Congress on such matters, they represent an appeal for the coming together of the branches of the American government behind the common mission of ensuring the nation\u2019s security.<\/p>\n On Tuesday Mr. Obama will speak from West Point.\u00a0 Surely the speech will be well advanced.\u00a0 The visuals will be impressive, perhaps even moving.\u00a0 But at least on a subliminal level, the choice of setting is more likely to heighten rather than ease global doubts about the speaker and his administration.\u00a0 For Team Obama has chosen to give their man a stage that, in the context of this moment, suggests they and he are thinking in terms of a candidate in campaign not a president of the United States at a moment of decision.\u00a0\u00a0 And here we come to the essence of global doubts about the president — that he is a campaigner, not a leader.<\/p>\n Regarding the speech\u2019s substance, the one leaked detail \u2013 no one seems to know if it is true or not \u2013 is that, while approving a troop increase in the 30,000 range, he will also announce a comparatively slow deployment, more like Johnson in Vietnam than Bush for the surge in Iraq.\u00a0 If true, the international impression of indecision, lack of strength, dearth of seriousness in the president and his circle will become larger and more vivid.<\/p>\n There come moments in presidential communications when impressions coalesce and either the man in the office becomes larger \u2013 as Reagan and Roosevelt unfailingly did after such occasions \u2013 or smaller in global eyes.\u00a0 For the nation\u2019s sake, let\u2019s hope Mr. Obama is seen as larger after tomorrow night.<\/p>\n But first signs are not encouraging. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As everyone knows, President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday night and reveal his decision on what to do in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Most weekend commentary focused on the announcement\u2019s political implications at home and how various players in and around Afghanistan will see it.\u00a0 But there will be another and in the long run at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n <\/p>\n