Barack Obama's miscommunication of plans to move ahead with an American missile defense project in Poland, and his subsequent contradiction of Polish President Lech Kaczynski's statement, are bigger problems than most are readily admitting. John Bolton, characteristically, calls it like he sees it. In the Wall Street Journal, Bolton writes that Russia's recent vow to place missile assets in Poland was an act of aggression aimed at Obama and at Kaczynski. Obama's mistake and disavowal leaves a Polish-American partnership looking very foolish, because Obama "should have understood that foreign leaders, both friends and adversaries, are in a state of high tension."
But what if Obama doesn't understand "a state of high tension"? For all the talk of his presidential temperament, there was something eerie about Obama's cool that was never brought up. Is it presidential not to get worked up over anything? When John McCain pressed Obama hard in the last debate, it is true Obama did not get rattled. But something noticeable came into his face. It wasn't annoyance so much as the flash of an error message. As if he simply didn't have the software necessary for expressing anger.
What other software is missing? The national guessing game underway right now is a function of the fact that Obama has never unequivocally held an important position. His declarations are four parts wiggle-room, one-part resolve. Either that or they face certain reversal. Missile defense, off-shore drilling, guns, partial-birth abortion, troop withdrawal–there are truly too many examples of lingering haziness to list. Is it presidential to elevate indecision to a kind of intellectual philosophy?
At some point, as the Decider-in-Chief, Obama will have to make decisions, hold to them, and act on them. And not deciding has a way of becoming a "made" decision. Once decisions are made, wiggle-room has a way of vanishing like the morning dew.
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