I recently read Bob Woodward’s new book: “Obama’s Wars.”   It provides valuable insight into President Obama and his administration.  The good news is that, at least with regard to national security, Obama does want to do what’s best for the country.  There is no evidence of the “I hate America” viewpoint of a William Ayers or a Reverend Wright.  If he holds that opinion, he is hiding it from everyone, including his own staff.  But upon reading this book, which is primarily based on first hand interviews, it is obvious that Obama has an incredible combination of naivety, arrogance and incompetence.  In every instance, he views all subjects in terms of himself.  For example the military, lead by Admiral Mullens, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Petraeus was lobbying for more troops in Afghanistan.  Woodward shows that the military was primarily motivated by fear of failure if they didn’t get the troops they needed.  But, Obama viewed this primarily as a personal attack on him and was angry.  Regardless of whom you think is right on the subject; the problem is that Obama could not view their actions objectively.

 With regard to Afghanistan, it is clear that Obama inherited a really tough situation.  I am not sure there is a good solution.  The military wanted to send in all those additional troops, but they weren’t exactly promising success.  Instead McChrystal was talking about taking 8 or 10 years to get things under control to the extent that the Afghan government could take over their own security.  No one was even hinting that a surge in Afghanistan would have results similar to those in Iraq. 

 On the other hand Obama was primarily focused on the political fallout rather than the potential risk to national security.  The entire basis for his strategy was based on two requirements.  First, we would not consider just leaving.  Second, we would not consider no leaving.  The only question was with regard to the timing.  He seemed to be primarily concerned that when things went wrong that he would not get the blame.  In other words his primary motivation for approving the additional troop levels was to avoid being criticized from not doing that. 

 Many people have criticized Bush for ignoring Afghanistan, but Woodward’s book hints that the opposite was true.  Bush had a bi-weekly video conference with the onsite commanders.  He clearly knew what was going on.  But Bush was not interested in escalating the war and he ignored the military requests for more and more troops.  I suspect that Bush felt the status quo was probably the best result we could expect in Afghanistan.  He was quite content to keep the Taliban under control and to make sure al Qaeda did not return.   That may not be very inspiring, but it just may be reality.

 If there is one person in the Obama administration that had the same view as Bush, it was VP Biden.  It surprised me that Biden seemed to be the only one who knew what he wanted to accomplish.  Biden strongly opposed sending in more troops, with no expectation of actually winning anything.  He felt that was the worst possible decision.  He suggested that the U.S. should back off from a counter insurgency approach and  revert to a counter terrorism approach.  That would involve leaving enough troops to keep the Taliban under control and to discourage al Qaeda from coming back, but to stop trying to do nation building when no one was even pretending that this was possible.  In other words, Biden wanted to continue doing exactly the same thing Bush was doing.

 Hillary Clinton supported sending in more troops, but she really didn’t think it would work, she just thought we should at least pretend we were really committed.  She had strong support from Senators Graham and McCain.  But frankly, I was unimpressed with any of them, because no one seemed to think this would really work.  I have a hard time understanding why we would escalate a war if we had no intention or even hope of actually winning.

 Ultimately Obama made the worst possible decision.  He sent in more troops, but not as many as the military said was the minimum necessary.  Then he required rules of engagement that concentrated on reducing civilian casualties by increasing the risk to our own troops.  Finally he guaranteed failure by publically declaring that we were leaving in 2011 regardless of circumstances. 

 The interview of Obama, printed in the New York Times recently, combined with Woodward’s book, offers a lot of insight into Obama.  If you want to read the actual article, following is the link:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html?_r=3&ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

 Obama really believes that he is brilliant. Several people commented that Obama always thinks he is the smartest person in the room.  He has convinced himself that he is uniquely gifted and entitled to power.  A few weeks ago I wrote that the number one characteristic of an incompetent person is that they do not know they are incompetent.  Obama has absolutely no accomplishments that justify his arrogant opinion of himself.  His academic record is mediocre.  From all accounts he couldn’t even write his own memoirs and had to dump the assignment on William Ayers.  He has no significant political accomplishments and has never demonstrated real leadership on any issue.  It is basically the equivalent of someone who never played organized football, at any level, deciding he is a better quarterback than Bret Favre.  If you read the characteristics of an extreme narcissist, this appears to be a common trait.   When one considers how Obama was abandoned by father, his step father and his mother, it is easy to understand why he might develop these traits.

 Regardless of why, Obama is in a state of denial regarding his own ability.  The following quote from the above article is very revealing:

  Given how much stuff was coming at us,” Obama told me, “we probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right. There is probably a perverse pride in my administration — and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top — that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”

 No President has been more involved in marketing and PR than Obama and no President has been give more favorable treatment by the main stream media, but Obama fails to understand that.  Instead, he thinks that every decision he made has been right, except that he has not done a good enough job of explaining to people why he is right. 

 The reporter reminded Obama about his speech after receiving the Democratic nomination, when he said the following:

 “we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

When the reporter pointed out that so far Obama hasn’t exactly done any of this, Obama responded with the following:

 I make no apologies for having set high expectations for myself and for the country, because I think we can meet those expectations,” he said. “Now, the one thing that I will say — which I anticipated and can be tough — is the fact that in a big, messy democracy like this, everything takes time. And we’re not a culture that’s built on patience.”

 In other words, Obama still thinks he made all the right policy decisions and he actually believes that he alone is capable of saving the planet.  It is one thing for a political candidate to say that, but for a President to naively think he is actually capable of that, when so far his policies have been a total disaster,  is beyond arrogance, it is delusional.

 A comment by Ken Duberstein, a former Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan who incredibly admits to voting for Obama in 2008, is very revealing:

 “When he talked about being a transformational president, it was about restoring the faith of the American people in our governing institutions,”

 An even more revealing remark was made by Peter Ozburg, White House Budget Director who recently left the administration.  He was apparently shocked to find out that the business community had a totally different view of things than the Obama administration.    When describing the obvious disconnect between the business community and the Obama administration he said the following:

 “I’d thought it was an 8, but it’s more like a 10,” he told me. “And rather than wasting time debating whether it’s legitimate,” he added, referring to his former colleagues, “the key is to recognize that it’s affecting what they do.”

 Ultimately, we are dealing with a President and an administration that is incapable of recognizing reality.  It is hard to imagine anyone making good decisions in that environment.  When you combine this with the unprecedented level of personal arrogance, it provides a pretty good explanation for what has happened and what is likely to happen in the future.  Obama is traveling all over the country trying to save Democrats from disaster.  Yet in most cases he is making things worse.  Today he said that the reason people are voting for Republicans is that they are too scared to think straight.  Perhaps I am wrong on this, but I never felt that insulting voters was a good strategy for winning an election.  I expect Republicans to score a historic victory in just over two weeks.  I also expect that Obama to continue believing that he is right and that everyone else is wrong.  He will blame Bush, he will blame Republicans, he will blame the media, he will blame Democrats and he will blame the American voters, and ultimately he will even blame our democratic system of government.  But he won’t even consider the possibility that he might be wrong.  After all, he is always the smartest person in the room.

 TDM