I am usually a deep believer in the correctness of Dennis Kucinich's thinking, but this time I part ways with him; not to say yet that he is wrong any more than I can definitively say that Mr. Obama is right, but to say that it is once again too early to condemn this new president.
Barak Obama's approach to the presidency seems to be very well balanced. He recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of both extremes and appears to me to walk the tight-rope of sensible action with poise and wisdom. In the power of his speech, of which last night's was a masterpiece, he gives us a presidential example worthy of respect and reason enough to follow his leadership.
While announcing that, he too, will be a war president, he wisely named the
time at which he will be forced to recognize either failure or success with the
same action à ‚¬" the withdrawal of troops à ‚¬" in the face of criticism by the likes
of John McCain. While announcing that he
committed to risking some thirty thousand more American lives in Afghanistan,
he pledged to that country that he would not make them submit to the
installation of a foreign government.
While announcing that he plans to escalate an on-going war, he pledged
to strive for the reduction and eventual elimination of our most dangerous
weapons of mass-destruction. On the
other hand, while announcing that he will close Guantanamo,
he silently operates Bagram and other black sites around the world. While saying that he does not believe in
American imperialism, he assures the world that trade under agreements like
NAFTA is a good thing.
Does all this make him a double-talker who really plans, under deep cover, to continue operations even the American people abhor? Or, does it make him a savvy politician aware that he can only incrementally change those things he, too, abhors? Is he a two-faced politician or a two-edged sword in the hands of a new-age Solomon?
None of us, perhaps not even Mr. Obama himself, knows the answers to these questions, but at this point, for my money, he is still enough of an improvement over the horrors we saw coming out of Washington, D.C. from the last administration that I will leave my protest signs in the corner to wait and watch.
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