Political commentary on factionalism, budget, and Obama’s foreign policy

15 admonition to “break and control the violence of faction” through a “well-constructed Union.” Right now factionalism leaves critical budget challenges unmet, stops serious investment in education and research, and leaves America trailing China on the green technologies that will be big job-creators in coming decades. The road to the American future is not “Drill, Baby, Drill!” Third, it’s just delusional to imagine that any president, Republican or Democrat, confronted by the meltdown of 2008, would not have seen as a core task a retrenchment of U.S. overseas commitments in an attempt to bring them in line with diminished resources. But with an angry, anxious nation, Republicans are betting that invocations of greatness and dominance, however illusory, will resonate. Bruce Jentleson, a political scientist at Duke University, said, “After the killing of Osama bin Laden, they can’t attack Obama as a wimp, but they will attack him as not being a real American.” Obama, he added, must answer by demonstrating “what this generation of Americans is going to show the world, how it’s going to compete in a global era. Against the illusion of restoration, he must offer adaptation.” With the U.S. economy wobbling, Obama runs the Bush Sr. risk. He got Bin Laden and has been on the right side of the Arab Spring — what Timothy Garton Ash has called “the most hopeful set of events in the 21st century so far, comparable in scale and potential to 1989.” Americans respond to that kind of hope. They care about foreign policy and see through foreign posturing. What they need now from Obama is a better sense of how their economy can thrive in this changed world. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018099