A Rocky Road For Obama If Elected
If Obama becomes President his popularity will sag and he will make unpopular decisions widely viewed as unsound.
No, that's not my opinion. My source is the always entertaining Joe Biden, who seems intent on lowering expectations to the point that the nation will marvel if Obama has the competence and vision to remember to show up on Jan 20 to be sworn in.
"I promise you, you all are gonna be sitting here a year from now going, 'Oh my God, why are they there in the polls? Why is the polling so down? Why is this thing so tough?' We're gonna have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. So I'm asking you now, I'm asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you're going to have to reinforce us."
"There are gonna be a lot of you who want to go, 'Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision'," Biden continued. "Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound."
I don't like the sound of that. The good decisions won't be popular? The suspense is killing me. And speaking of killing me, what about this fear-mongering from Biden?
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."
Oh, great - so per Biden, after Obama gets the 3 AM phone call we will all think he blew it. I deplore this negative, attack-oriented campaigning. C'mon, Joe, give me a reason to Go With O!
Hmm - people deplored similar fear-mongering from Hillary and Rudy. Seasons change.
MORE: Jim Geraghty worries that the Senate won't be able to advise and consent in a crisis:
I'm hoping that, if Obama is elected, he nominates the best attorney general, secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of homeland security, etc., he can find. But if a crisis is unfolding, the Senate will probably be under enormous pressure to confirm the nominees and get them into their jobs as quickly as possible. That seems like less than ideal circumstances for the Senate to exercise appropriate scrutiny.
When did we expect scrutiny from Harry Reid and his 59 fellow Dems?
Jennifer Rubin has fun:
Well, golly, if Obama is so untested that we will have a series of international crises ? at the very time we are in a financial meltdown ? which will make the Cuban Missile Crisis look like a walk in the park, shouldn?t we vote for the other guy who will keep all the miscreants in their place? Now, maybe we should rest easy because, according to Biden, ?I?ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know, so I?m not being falsely humble with you.? (Maybe Hezbollah?s occupation of Lebanon was one of the things he forgot.)
The Captain reminds us of Kennedy's meeting with Krushchev "without preconditions":
What resulted? The Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy wound up trading strategic intel and missile installations in western Asia in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of the nuclear missiles from Cuba. The entire Kennedy administration turned out to be a foreign-policy disaster that was only overlooked because of the tragic assassination of Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.
I agree with Biden. Obama is exactly like Kennedy in this regard, and our enemies will test us by threatening our interests around the globe if we elect Obama. I?d rather avoid the problem altogether and elect a man who puts enough fear into the minds of our enemies to keep them from testing us at all.
Biden is trying to put lipstick on the Bay of Pigs.
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