My must read of the day is "The Humbling of a President," by Daniel Henninger, in the Wall Street Journal:
There is a story about Mr. Obama relevant to the war, battle, or whatever he declared Wednesday evening against the Islamic State, aka ISIS. It is found in his former campaign manager David Plouffe's account of the 2008 election, "The Audacity to Win."
Mr. Plouffe writes that during an earlier election race, Mr. Obama had a "hard time allowing his campaign staff to take more responsibility." To which Barack Obama answered: "I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I'll hire to do it." Audacity indeed.
In a 2008 New Yorker article by Ryan Lizza, Mr. Obama is quoted telling another aide: "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors." Also, "I think I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters." […]
What we now know is that Mr. Obama is not even close to being his own best Secretary of State, his own best Secretary of Defense, his own best national security adviser or his own best CIA director.
The question is: Does he know it?
Can a humbling experience of such startling proportions have sunk in? It had better. What the U.S. needs if it is to prevail in the battle Mr. Obama put forth Wednesday is the genuine article of presidential leadership. What the U.S. does not need in the Oval Office is a utility infielder playing everyone else's position. We are competing against global terrorism's heaviest hitters, who have established state seizure as a strategic goal.
Leadership, based on advice that comes from experts and knowledge of the situation on the ground, should take us into the kind of military action President Obama laid out last night, but I’m not convinced that’s what moved him in this direction.
When Obama appeared on NBC's Meet the Press, to set the stage for last night's address, a stream of lawmakers went on the other Sunday shows praising his rhetoric. "It's overdue," they said, but it’s welcome and appropriate. I imagine those people felt the same about Wednesday’s address.
All of which begs the obvious question—if it's overdue, then why now?
That's what Fox’s Megyn Kelly asked her panel last night, and the general consensus—from Kirsten Powers to Dana Perino—was that polls might have played a role (and they aren’t the only ones to bounce around that idea).
It was barely two weeks ago when Obama maintained airstrikes in Syria were not imminent. What changed was public opinion. The majority of Americans now support airstrikes in both Iraq and in Syria, and don’t approve of the president’s "handling of international affairs."
I, for one, adore polls. I'll bring them up as context to discuss nearly any topic, but I'm uncomfortable with the thought that polls would be a significant factor in foreign policy decisions. That’s not to say they don’t matter—public support is a good thing—it’s just to say they should be an afterthought.
If we're going to take military action it should be because numerous advisers, people who know more than the average American, believe it's necessary and right. Going to war, or avoiding war, based on political palatability is a recipe for disaster.
A decision, even if it's the right one, that is driven solely or primarily by polls should worry us because it's negligent—for a president, it's professional malpractice. Leadership wins wars, not politics—and I’m just not sure that there were many things other than polls that persuaded Obama to lay out this strategy.