Reality Wedge #2
You may remember from my last post, that I refer to an area of agreement between people who can agree on very little, as the "Reality Wedge".What troubles some of us about President Obama isn't a single apology here or a single handshake there; it is evidence of a particular cast of mind. For Obama's foreign policy gambit to succeed, it isn't enough for him to "listen" and sit passively by as America is castigated by the Daniel Ortega's of the world. He also, and most importantly, needs to press reluctant allies and our enemies for concessions and actually get a few. Peter Wehner - Commentary
If, as we all suspect, (Obama) means to push the sides toward a deal, there is no obvious reason apply pressure privately. It is time he started talking more like John Foster Dulles and less like Oprah. Obama, in other words, has to start by imposing an agenda on Israel's conversation. He can win over Israelis eventually, but only if every front page story for the next six months is about whether or not Bibi and Lieberman are destroying relations with Washington. That is the only thing Israeli elites fear more than the loss of solidarity. Bernard Avishai
I would class Israeli peace activist Bernard Avishai and former Bush-II White House aide, Peter Wehner, writing in neocon haven Commentary Magazine as "people who can agree on very little", wouldn't you?
Nobody could be more in Barack Obama's corner than Eugene Robinson, who wrote in the Washington Post about the Trinidad Conference and the Chávez handshake:
My argument isn't that Obama should try to be someone he's not. It's that he's declining to use one of the tools at his disposal. As public anger over the U.S. bank bailouts was rising, a well-timed burst of presidential outrage might have allowed him to get out in front of it.What these people are saying is that they are afraid that Barack Obama is a wimp.
Personally, I don't think he is.
