Lakhota
Diamond Member
- Jul 14, 2011
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By Michael Tomasky
Obamas Missing Bravado
Obama has nearly decimated al Qaeda. Why doesnt he brag about it? Michael Tomasky on liberals squeamishness at thumping their chestsand the endless victory lap that Bush would have taken.
The immediate political question raised by the successful drone attack that took out Anwar al-Awlaki is simple. How much credit will Barack Obama get for this? He ordered renewed drone attacks in Yemen earlier this year, and now, we see clear results. But I doubt Obama will derive much political benefit, for one obvious reason and one reason that is less obvious but that reflects something more enduring in our political culture.
When that SEAL team nailed Osama bin Laden, Obama got about a five-point bounce out of it, but it washed away as quickly as a wave on a beach. The conventional wisdom said, well, its the economy. People are more concerned about the unemployment rate. It also happened as the debt-ceiling crisis was starting to build, and Washington was more obsessed with it. So the conventional wisdom wasnt necessarily wrong.
But it also wasnt the whole story. The fuller explanation reflects differences in the emotional and psychological make-up of liberals and conservatives. Conservatives are far more eager to thump their chests about these things. Liberals, from Obama to Hillary Clinton to the liberal foreign-policy gurus at the think tanks to your average person, find it a little unseemly.
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