Provocative Quote Of The Day
\nJanuary 16, 2010
\nBy admin<\/p>\n
In at least one way, Mr. Obama resembles his predecessor: He has enormous self-confidence. But where George W. Bush\u2019s certainty stemmed from moral conviction, Mr. Obama\u2019s arises from a sense of intellectual superiority.<\/strong><\/p>\n Are these comparable strengths? Weaknesses? And does Obama\u2019s sense of intellectual superiority breed certainty or doubt?<\/p>\n Cohen definitely gets at a key difference between Bush and Obama, perhaps the defining difference. But I am not sure his interpretation is on point. Perhaps a better line would be this: Obama depends on his intellectual processes so that he can sleep at night, in the same way that Bush depended on his moral conviction. In jobs of this magnitude, one needs to develop some coping mechanism. But is that sort of confidence the same thing as certainty?<\/p>\n A key facet of Obama\u2019s process\u2013in its ideal form, at least, to which the president seems to aspire\u2013is a willingness to upend certainty. Obama was content that the government was on track in Afghanistan in the spring. He staked his presidency on it. But by the fall he completely reversed himself, adding tens of thousands more troops and shifting strategy again. Bush reversed himself on his Iraq strategy as well\u2013in 2007\u2013but it had taken many years and much moral aggrandizing before the change came.<\/p>\n Read Cohen\u2019s blistering op-ed \u201cTaking The Measure of Obama\u2019s Foreign Policy\u201d here.<\/p>\n http:\/\/swampland.blogs.time.com\/2010\/01\/11\/provocative-quote-of-the-day\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Provocative Quote Of The Day January 16, 2010 By admin In at least one way, Mr. Obama resembles his predecessor: He has enormous self-confidence. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4698,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/4698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tfrasheed.org\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}