In his New York Times column last Monday, “No Substitute for Victory,” Bill Kristol was full of hope that Obama, while in front of Berlin’s Siegessäule, would “make the case for victory” in the struggle against terrorism; that Obama would “warn of the temptation of assuming we can somehow avoid confronting the terrorists and jihadists, and those who support them;” and that Obama would “express pride…in the efforts of American servicemen and women, and those from our coalition partners, who have fought and sacrificed, along with countless Afghans and Iraqis, against those who would kill and subjugate their fellow human beings.”
Well, perhaps to Kristol’s chagrin, Obama met and surpassed every one of Kristol “hopes.”
I say chagrin, because one would have expected that Kristol–in his Monday NYT column– might, however reluctantly, acknowledge the fact that Obama did address his “hopes.”
In a post last night, anticipating Kristol’s column, I wrote:
I believe that Senator Obama more than met the “challenge” posed by Kristol, not only at the Siegessäule, but also in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Israel, Jordan, Paris and London.
Whether Obama’s words will meet Kristol’s “exigent” (i.e. partisan) criteria, remains to be seen. Personally, I doubt it, but I could and would like to be pleasantly surprised.
Well, I wasn’t “pleasantly surprised.”
About the only reference to Obama’s soaring reception in Germany was a sarcastic reference to an article in Der Spiegel, where according to Kristol:
The article’s premise was that an Obama victory is a foregone conclusion: “Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin’s Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States.”
To which Kristol predictably asks, “Don’t the American people get a chance to weigh in on this in November?”
Not only did Kristol ignore Obama’s batting every one of his “hope” balls out of the Siegessäule park, but he also decided that, since nothing else is working, it might be time to play the good old Republican fear card—starting with the title of his piece, “Be Afraid. Please.”
In a roller coaster of emotions, Kristol expresses fear,
That the way things are going, the hopes of McCain supporters who “have hope — for an America that wins its wars, protects its unborn children and allows its citizens to keep more of their hard-earned income,” will be dashed.
That “one man’s ‘deadlock-proof’ Democratic majority is another’s unchecked Democratic majority.” “Yikes,” Kristol groans.
That, “if the voters elect Obama as president, they’ll be putting Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in untrammeled control of our future.”
That, “…if you don’t like the Congress in which Senator Obama serves in the majority right now, you really should be alarmed about a President Obama rubber-stamping the deeds of a Democratic Congress next year.”
Well, perhaps the use of the “fear card,” when referring to Kristol’s “angst” is a little strong, especially when compared to the entire stacked deck of fear (and marked) cards that the Bush administration has so deftly dealt and played during the past seven years.
Kristol does conclude his roller coaster piece with a bit of hope:
And so I drifted off into a pleasant daydream. It’s election night, and a victorious John McCain is waving around the Spiegel article, “No. 44 Has Spoken” — just as Harry Truman, 60 years ago, triumphantly held aloft the early edition of the Nov. 3, 1948, Chicago Tribune, with its banner headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
My hope is that Gerhard Spörl, the chief editor of Der Spiegel’s foreign desk is right,and that Barack Obama will indeed become the 44th U.S. president.
And, please, don’t accuse me of “letting Germans decide who our next president will be .”
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.