Growing in Office

I think I expressed somewhere on this site last summer or fall a fear that President Obama might end up just being a marionette of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid. Stephanie told me I was all wet though I’m sure she used kinder language to the effect of, “Wait and see, I think you’ll be surprised.”

I’ve been slowly coming to the hopeful realization that I may have been dead wrong at least on the defense/War on Terror front. (I won’t yet say foreign policy because I’m not yet convinced the President won’t take us down a protectionist path. I am also worried to death about Israel though I’m not really sure there is anything to be done on that front as long as we’re tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m certainly not there on the domestic front—and I do blame President Bush for setting the terrible precedent last fall.)

VDH (his Works and Days site is shown on the right) has been all over this for months. I haven’t posted about this as I wanted to see whether any patterns were emerging. I’m beginning to think there are. The reversal on the release of the prisoner interrogation photos being the most recent though the President could really end all discussion by executive order under FOIA if his critics are correct.

Michael Barone seems to be coming to the same conclusion. From JWR today:

I choose to believe the non-cynical explanation. As commander in chief, Obama looks soldiers and CIA personnel in the eyes and shakes their hands, knowing that some of them might die following his orders. It's a terrible responsibility. Look at how the presidency aged Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — or Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Listen to Roosevelt's D-Day radio broadcast that in its entirety is a prayer (think of the uproar if Bush had done that!), in which his voice is almost cracking. He knew that thousands of Americans following his orders would die, as more did in the next few days than have in six years in Iraq.

I believe Obama is taking this responsibility seriously. And in doing so he has found himself not indicting but validating the decisions his predecessor took, and any conscientious executive would have taken, to protect the nation.