A Very Charitable Post About President Obama

President Obama’s Many Missed Opportunities, Newsday, December 27, 2016, "Everyone makes mistakes, and the Obama administration has made its fair share. But harping on mistakes is easy. The tragedy of most presidential administrations rests not in the errors they make, but in the opportunities they miss — and in the belief that no one else can seize them."

Kirkpatrick, Now More Than Ever

Go Read Kirkpatrick. Again, Contentions, February 1, 2011. "Now more than ever, Jeane Kirkpatrick’s “Dictatorships & Double Standards” essay deserves to be read and pondered. If this isn’t the greatest essay COMMENTARY has ever published, it’s certainly the most influential."

Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity

Happy Bastille Day!, Contentions, July 14, 2009. "There are two traditional ways to mark Bastille Day. First, parades. This year’s festivities were noteworthy for the inclusion of 400 Indian troops, to celebrate, as AFP put it, France’s “strategic relationship with the world’s biggest democracy.” Personally, I thought Clive of India pretty much put an end to Franco-Indian ties, but it turns out that AFP is referring to India’s appetite for France’s nuclear reactors and world-beating military technology (insert joke here). Why is it that European “strategic relationships” are mostly about money? The other way to celebrate is by burning cars and attacking the police."

First Venezuela, Then Honduras

The Honduran Re-Run, Contentions, July 7, 2009. "Jamie Kirchick, Rich Richman, and J.G. Thayer have offered persuasive comments on the Honduran crisis, which is rapidly turning into a kind of political Rorschach test. If you are the Christian Science Monitor, you sigh that “The fact a military coup occurred apparently against U.S. wishes suggests how American dominance in the region has waned,” a verdict that nicely condemns Zelaya’s ouster as a coup, insinuates that the U.S. may secretly have been involved in it, and uses the occasion to applaud the decline and fall of the American empire. If, like the Obama Administration, you want to ‘engage’ America’s enemies into placidity, Honduras offers an opportunity to stand alongside Hugo Chavez and the Castros in defense of what is implausibly called democracy."