Krauthammer has started a new fad. Blessed are the liberals to have a conservative lead the charge praising Obama. Of course they pick up the fumble and are heading for the endzne with it. See Estrich's column after Krauthammer. Sound familiar. Thanks Charles with you on our side why do we need liberals? I just don't see that there was any genius on Obama's part. Someone said they give Obama more credit than Congress for DADT and START and the rest. Why? In any case as long as we have a MSM that is so biased the Republicans have to do better at PR.
****Obama's new start
By Charles Krauthammer
Thursday, December 23, 2010; 8:00 PM
Riding the lamest of ducks, President Obama just won the Triple Crown. He fulfilled (1) his most important economic priority, passage of Stimulus II, a.k.a. the tax cut deal (the perfect pre-re-election fiscal sugar high - the piper gets paid in 2013 and beyond); (2) his most important social policy objective, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; and (3) his most cherished (achievable) foreign policy goal, ratification of the New START treaty with Russia.
Politically, these are all synergistic. The bipartisan nature of the tax deal instantly repositioned Obama back to the center. And just when conventional wisdom decided the deal had caused irreparable alienation from his liberal base, Obama almost immediately won it back - by delivering one of the gay rights movement's most elusive and coveted breakthroughs.
The symbolism of the don't ask, don't tell repeal cannot be underestimated. It's not just that for the civil rights community, it represents a long-awaited extension of the historic arc - first blacks, then women, now gays. It was also Obama decisively transcending the triangulated trimming of Bill Clinton, who instituted don't ask, don't tell in the first place. Even more subtly and understatedly, the repeal represents the taming of the most conservative of the nation's institutions, the military, by a movement historically among the most avant-garde. Whatever your views, that is a cultural landmark.
Then came START, which was important for Obama not just because of the dearth of foreign policy achievements these past two years but because treaties, especially grand-sounding treaties on strategic arms, carry the aura of presidential authority and diplomatic mastery.
No matter how useless they are, or even how damaging. New START was significantly, if subtly, damaging, which made the rear-guard Republican opposition it engendered so salutary. The debate it sparked garnered the treaty more attention than it would have otherwise and thus gave Obama a larger PR victory. But that debate also amplified the major flaw in the treaty - the gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry.
One of the great achievements of the past decade was the Bush administration's severing of that link - first, by its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, which had expressly prevented major advances in missile defense, and then with the 2002 Treaty of Moscow, which regulated offensive weapons but ostentatiously contained not a single word about any connection to missile defense. Why is this important? Because missile defense is essential for protecting ourselves from the most menacing threat of the coming century - nuclear hyper-proliferation.
The relinking that we acquiesced to in the preamble to New START is a major reversal of that achievement. Sure, Obama sought to reassure critics with his letter to the Senate promising unimpeded development of our European missile defense system. But the Russians have already watched this president cancel our painstakingly planned Polish and Czech missile defenses in response to Russian protests and threats. That's why they insisted we formally acknowledge an "interrelationship" between offense and defense. They know that their threat to withdraw from START, if the United States were to build defenses that displease them, will inevitably color - and restrain - future U.S. missile defense advances and deployments.
Obama's difficulty in overcoming the missile defense objection will serve to temper the rest of his nuclear agenda, including U.S. entry into the test-ban treaty, and place Obama's ultimate goal of total nuclear disarmament blessedly out of reach. Conservatives can thus take solace that their vigorous opposition to START is likely to prevent further disarmament mischief down the road. But what they cannot deny is the political boost the treaty's ratification gives Obama today, a mere seven weeks after his Election Day debacle.
The great liberal ascendancy of 2008, destined to last 40 years (predicted James Carville), lasted less than two. Yet, the great Republican ascendancy of 2010 lasted less than two months. Republicans will enter the 112th Congress with larger numbers but no longer with the wind - the overwhelming Nov. 2 repudiation of Obama's social-democratic agenda - at their backs.
"Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, lamenting his side's "capitulation" in the lame-duck session. Yes, but it was less Harry than Barry. Obama came back with a vengeance. His string of lame-duck successes is a singular political achievement. Because of it, the epic battles of the 112th Congress begin on what would have seemed impossible just one month ago - a level playing field.
****Susan Estrich
Obama the Genius
Was it only a month ago that the chattering class was writing off the president as being almost as thoroughly defeated as the lame duck Congress, as the failed leader who had lost his way, popularity plummeting, accomplishments vulnerable? Insiders worried about who was up next. How much worse could it get? Did he really want to be a one-term president? Any Republican could beat him, friend and foe asserted. (Well, maybe not any Republican, but almost any). And then, like the weather in New England, everything changed.
In politics, the distance between idiot and genius, especially at the highest levels, can be measured in days.
In the past 30, this president has put in place a tax deal that also extends unemployment benefits - and made clear to House Democrats that they could like it or lump it. He pushed to a vote a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia, signed into law the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" and even got some judges confirmed. That's just off the top of my head.
Even without Rahm, it turns out the president knows his way around tough negotiations and games of chicken, not only forging a compromise but landing himself squarely in the middle. "Triangulation" minus Dick Morris. He has been decisive, tough and confident. When House Democrats revolted, he stood up to them and told them what was what. The once unified Republican bloc splintered. He found the votes he needed. The issue that threatened the early days of Bill Clinton's presidency — gays in the military — was resolved with the stroke of a pen.
Who is this genius?
Who is this natural-born leader?
None other than last month's beaten man.
The man we would wish were president if only he weren't.
Hillary has probably never been more popular. (Sometimes I wonder how she ever lost the nomination what with all the folks who now claim they were for her and were right, to boot. But then, I can remember when public opinion polls during Watergate showed that McGovern must have beaten Nixon.)
It's easy to read the daily polls and see the entire public as a fickle lot constantly racing in one direction or another, radiating anger as they do. But the reality is that it's mostly the middle that's swinging, if and when they pay attention. And that middle — the group that either likes Obama no matter what he does or doesn't like him, on the same terms — is mostly in the ideological middle, not to mention, by definition, nonpartisan.
So when the president acts in a nonpartisan way, when he forces a compromise that keeps the tax cuts for everyone and extends unemployment benefits for folks who really can't find work (even if our grandkids will pay for it) and ends the bickering and backstabbing and intolerable paralysis, those folks are more likely to swing in his direction.
And when Republicans like Susan Collins are willing to be in the picture, when the aisle doesn't bind, he gets points with people who are sick and tired of what mostly sounds, from a distance, like bickering bullies. And even if folks don't see all of it themselves, all the chattering about the president being back on top shapes the coverage and ultimately tends to nudge them in that direction.
And so Barack Obama ends the year not vanquished but firmly at the head of the table, which isn't bad for a guy who last month was taking heat from every direction.
He's on his way up. Mark my words. He's a genius — until, that is, the weather changes.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at
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