Another rung down for "Afghan good enough"

If it's possible to define success in Afghanistan down any further, Obama may have done so in his speech seeking an end to perpetual war yesterday:

In Afghanistan, we will complete our transition to Afghan responsibility for that country’s security.  Our troops will come home.  Our combat mission will come to an end.  And we will work with the Afghan government to train security forces, and sustain a counterterrorism force, which ensures that al Qaeda can never again establish a safe haven to launch attacks against us or our allies.

Not, "we'll work with the Afghan government to train security forces to support and sustain a democratic government that serves its people." Not even a force to fend off the Taliban. Keeping al Qaeda out is thesole goal.

That went along with a retroactive redefinition of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in the Obama years:

Obama on counterterrorism: will "redefines" become "unwinds"?

It is true, as Matt Welch avers, that Obama could amend much of what is wrong with the current U.S. response to terror by executive order, without the help of Congress. Also true, by extension, is that much of what is wrong -- excessive use of targeted killings, failure to release those Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release, disproportionate punishment of leakers -- is his responsibility [Update, 5/25: See Joe Nocera today on Obama's responsibility for the continuing hell of Guantanamo].  Also, that while yesterday Obama articulated important intentions -- paring back and ultimately repealing AUMF, closing Guantanamo, finding a way out of the indefinite detention trap -- he was lighter on announced action -- though paring back the drone campaign and transferring it to the military (which he didn't mention, but has signaled clearly through other channels) is certainly significant, as is getting the ball rolling with Yemeni detainees.

And yet, we should not under-emphasize the import -- or the courage required -- in redefining the conflict for the American people, taking us back to the future in our response to terrorism, and warning -- as pointedly as Eisenhower did about the military-industrial complex -- about the dangers of perpetual war.  And in this regard, my response to Obama's rhetoric in his speech redefining U.S. response to the terror threat is, once again, almost Pavlovian. He is so analytical, so precise, so nuanced, and so clear in laying out the threats we face, and the need to balance threats to security and freedom, that I can't help but feel renewed faith in his judgment, and to suspect, with one caveat I'll get to later, that he's balanced his responsibility for U.S. security and for the preservation of our civil liberties and standing in the world reasonably well -- constrained by our divided government, the hysterical existing terms of our national security discourse, an intellectually corrupt opposition, and the institutional machinery of the Pentagon and the security state .

Note the blend of analysis, classification and narrative below, the refusal of triumphalism, the parsing of threats -- Pre-, post- and post-post 9/11; regional vs. U.S.-aimed, terror generally vs. jihad, overseas vs. homegrown:

Kevin Drum's dangerous indulgence

Kevin Drum gave in to temptation this afternoon (and I gather it's kind of Obama's fault):

A couple of hours ago I had a choice to make: spend the next hour writing a reaction to President Obama's big national security speech, or go to lunch. I went to lunch.

Such lapses can put us in danger. So claims Screwtape, C.S. Lewis' devil and master tempter (in Lewis' imagining, each of us is assigned a guardian devil, so to speak, as well as a guardian angel, and they battle it out moment by moment until we die). Read and tremble, midday indulgers:

I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument, I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control, and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line, for when I said, "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning," the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind," he was already halfway to the door.

Where Obama's Green Lantern lies

Sean Trende offers up a kind of excuse for pundits and centrists who indulge in what political scientist Brendan Nyhan calls Green Lanternism. --lambasting Obama for failures of ill-defined "leadership," i.e., for failing to charm the Republicans out of their scorched-earth opposition or to overcome the extreme constraints the Constitution imposes on presidential power in domestic affairs.   According to Trende, the expectation that Obama would exert magical powers to overcome opposition derives from the campaign Obama ran in 2008:

Many of the president’s supporters thought they were voting for the Green Lantern in 2008.

Remember, the actual policy differences between Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards were pretty limited. To help distinguish himself from the pack, and to attack Clinton indirectly, Obama all but dressed up in green tights, claiming that his candidacy would enable us to put old arguments behind us, bring people together, and transform the country.

There is an element of truth to this, as there was an element of malarkey in Obama's promise to usher in "a different kind of politics."  But only an element, on both sides of that equation. Obama's core pitch and promise in 2008 was more realistic and tough-minded than "I can melt the opposition."

Does Obama subject African Americans to "targeted scorn"?

Yesterday I put up some thoughts about Obama's commencement speech at Morehouse College, in blithe and admittedly self-imposed ignorance of what others had said about it (I plead lack of time, fatigue and eagerness to get my thoughts down -- and will also cop to not wanting to complicate that quick-stream).  I thought it was an awesome speech, in the pre-colloquial sense of awesome, as in awe-inspiring.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, however, greets the speech (and a parallel commencement address by Michelle) with a powerful indictment. In response to a passage in which Obama admonishes the Morehouse Men, "there's no longer any room for excuses" -- e.g., being held back by racism, Coates writes:

This clearly is a message that only a particular president can offer. Perhaps not the "president of black America," but certainly a president who sees holding African Americans to a standard of individual responsibility as part of his job. This is not a role Barack Obama undertakes with other communities.

Taking the full measure of the Obama presidency thus far, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this White House has one way of addressing the social ills that afflict black people -- and particularly black youth -- and another way of addressing everyone else. I would have a hard time imagining the president telling the women of Barnard that "there's no longer room for any excuses" -- as though they were in the business of making them. Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of "all America," but he also is singularly the scold of "black America."

There is undoubtedly a lot of truth to this. As Fallows notes in response, though, Obama has to walk a razor-thin tightrope when addressing African Americans directly or matters of race generally -- or, better, as Fallows put it, "a tiny, little rope suspended across a Grand Canyon." By way of additional mitigation, Fallows notes,  "We all take a different tone in setting expectations for "our own."

I would add three further mitigating thoughts. First, in his admonishments throughout the speech, Obama was channeling the historic messages of Morehouse itself -- including in the passage Coates focused on:

Obama gets personal at Morehouse

I have read or listened to several Obama commencement addresses over the years, and his address at Morehouse College yesterday struck me as something of a departure in several ways. While I may have missed or forgotten prior iterations of the parts that struck me, let me set down what I thought was singular.

First off: Morehouse is a men's school, and so Obama addressed men, which gave the talk a retro feel.  He talked about what it means to be a man, rather than simply a responsible adult, and what it means to be a black man in particular.

Addressing black men meant walking a fine line -- as Obama always does when he addresses African American audiences -- between the particular and the universal (in this case, particulars of gender as well as ethnicity).  Obama acknowledged as much in a rather meta moment:

Two takes on Obama from Fallows

In the long hot political summer of 2011, as Obama was sliding down the precipice toward the Budget Control Act (that wonderful deed that gave us the sequester), I was struck by a balance struck between admiration and anxiety about Obama in a note from James Fallows:

"We will hope that the qualities we admire in Obama outweigh the ones that make us nervous."

Today, in a view-from-China at our three scandals, Fallows concentrates on the one that troubles him -- the leak investigation -- and by the way expresses a similar toggle-switch assessment of the president's strengths and weaknesses (in an exception to the long-term rule):

It is one of the rare times I question not his effectiveness or tactics but his judgment. 

Housekeeping note*

A busy work week and a long graduation weekend have put xpostfactoid on unexpected semi-pause for a week. Back soon! - maybe even on the weekend.

We're coming back with this booty -- Sir Walter of the South. Yippee! Painted toenails not included.

* Is "housekeeping note" Bernstein's coinage, or in general bloggy parlance. Apologies to JB if the former.

Are "liberals" learning to love the sequester?

A while back, as the sequester took hold and Obama unfurled his budget, Greg Sargent framed up what he presented as a tough choice for Democrats (on the dubious chance that they would have any choice at all): Stand pat with the sequester in place, Medicare and Social Security left essentially untouched, and no new revenues beyond the $600 billion over ten years enacted in January -- or sign on to a grand bargain that would include entitlement cuts proposed in Obama's 2014 budget, e.g.,  chained-CPI and higher Medicare premiums for wealthier seniors, along with more targeted and gradual discretionary spending cuts than those mandated by the sequester, and some new revenue.

As of today, Sargent seems to have made his choice, or assumed a collective one for "liberals":

The Monica Lewinsky scandal may have helped save Social Security in the late 1990s. Now the scandal fever currently gripping Washington — IRS, Benghazi, Associated Press phone records — may save Social Security and Medicare two decades later.

Liberals who are dreading the scandal-mania that is taking hold should note that it contains a potential upside: It could make a Grand Bargain that includes cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits even less likely than it already is.

Save Social Security? From Obama's chained-CPI proposal, which by slowing cost-of-living increases would reduce payments from the current baseline by about 0.3% per year, with offsets for the very elderly? Save Medicare? From Obama's $400 billion/10 year grab bag of nips and tucks, little different from those proposed in his 2013 budget, the most notable difference being larger (but still quite incremental) premium hikes for wealthy seniors than those proposed in 2013?