Obama Continues Bush's 2nd Term

-- Badly

by John Bolton - June 10th, 2009 - Washington Times

Former President George W. Bush's mistakes resulted from sleep-walking away from conservative values, whereas President Obama openly repudiates them, both believing in and fully understanding what he is doing. Accordingly, conservatives need engage in no "agonizing reappraisals" of their fundamental views. They need to adjust to being in opposition, but that is the purest kind of opportunity, not a burden. Mr. Obama's wearying and unpresidential refrain of blaming his predecessor is implicitly a trap, an effort to entice us to reflexively defend the Bush administration. Instead, we should forthrightly explain where Mr. Bush went wrong, when he did, repudiating his errors as cheerily as Mr. Obama does, and then, agreeably to conservative principles, just as cheerily critiquing Mr. Obama's even more egregious mistakes.

The fact that Obama DOES NOT see himself representing America is the major problem. Obama sees his role as mediating the differences between America and the world. That is why he is so willing to apologize repeatedly for any shortcoming that others see in our behavior, even when the criticism is unfair. Obama just does not get that his role is not to affirm their view to mediate differences, but to defend our view and our nation. He was elected President of the United States of America, not Premier of Global Socialism. Though I suspect he does not agree. He actually thinks of himself as a citizen of the world, not President of the United States.

Bolton does a good job of summarizing the conservative principles that should guide foreign policy and a good strategy to defeat this man, who if not an enemy, is certainly not representing our nation effectively.