Reductio ad Obama

Reductio ad Obama

JAMES TARANTO: Reductio ad Obama: The logic of the president’s incapacity to lead.
“Obama loves to speak in the first-person singular; he seems oblivious to the obnoxiousness of his habitual references (including one in today’s press conference) to “my military.” But suddenly it’s a matter of whether we mean what we say.

It’s the same dodge as “I didn’t set a red line.” In reality, as we noted Wednesday, Obama did introduce the idea of “a red line,” and his subordinates later affirmed that he had thereby set such a line. Obama is using the first-person plural to obscure what he’s really doing by asking lawmakers for approval: demanding that they say that they mean what he said. He blundered into a policy by speaking carelessly, waited months before thinking through its implications, then made a decision. He believes he has the authority to carry out that decision on his own, but apparently is unwilling to do so unless Congress affords him political cover.

I’m beginning to think that this President Obama fellow just isn’t up to the job.”

PEGGY NOONAN: WHY AMERICA IS SAYING NO. Syria and Obama: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.

SYRIA: “It’s hard to find a precedent for a president imploding on something this big.” More fundamental transformation!
Posted at 7:39 am by Glenn Reynolds

P.J. O’ROURKE: I Came, I Saw, I Skedaddled: Decisive moments in Barack Obama history.