...pssst...

[WilliamPitt]

In his slow decision-making, Obama goes with head, not gut
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."

Obama's handling of the Afghanistan conundrum has been a spectacle of deliberation unlike anything seen in the White House in recent memory. The strategic review began in September. Again and again, the war council convened in the Situation Room. The president mulled an array of unappealing options. Next week, finally, he will tell the American public the outcome of all this strategizing.

"He's establishing his decision-making process as being almost diametrically the opposite of the previous administration," says Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff. Wilkerson, who teaches national security decision-making at George Washington University, says the Bush-Cheney style was "cowboy-like, typical Texas, typical Wyoming, and extremely secretive."

(snip)

Obama's style has been attacked from his left flank as well. Liberals have zinged him as being too cautious, too much of a compromiser. Some of his supporters would like to see him show more fire in the belly and recapture the energy that propelled him to victory last year.

"I think the Obama we've seen as president is a very different Obama than we saw during the campaign. He doesn't seem to be connected, he doesn't seem to have the passion, he doesn't seem to be conveying the grand and inspiring vision," says the progressive historian Allan Lichtman of American University. "If you want to be a transformational president, you've got to take the risks."

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, says Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office. "They kind of were sold Utopia, and they bought it, and it didn't happen," he says. "People were comparing the candidate to Abraham Lincoln before he served a day of his presidency. Nobody can live up to that."

The rest: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/24/AR2009112404225.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR

Food for thought.

[Fumesucker]

1. Robert McNamara was someone who operated from the head rather than the gut too..

How did that little fracas work out?

[SoCalDem]

2. A plethora of choices.. all bad.

this is the hand that most democratic presidents end up playing.. they seem to always follow republicans who delight in handing off an ill-thought-out problem that ends up hog-tying the new president.

The instant I heard republicans "praising" Obama's stance on Afghanistan, I knew he was deep in troubleville. No amount of thinking and planning can overcome the basic facts. We are there..Bush saw to that. and The military has been given a free rein for too many years. If all you have is a hammer, the solution to every problem is obviously a nail.

It's too bad that Obama cannot just say.. "Afghanistan is not what we were led to believe it is..it's unwinable by every measure we can use. Our being there is creating more problems than we are solving, so we're not going to do it any more.. If they ever get their act together, and decide they want to leave the 13th century, they know how to contact us".

[EFerrari]

22. If Afghanistan were to want to move into modernity

it would be much harder to manipulate.

[VMI Dem]

3. I've heard the Afghan surge is already working.

More chess.

[bigtree]

4. I'd go with the gut on this one

The process he chose gave too much weight and importance to those in the Pentagon leadership who began their involvement with Afghanistan under Bush (adopting the same rationale Bush used to justify everything he did in the region). His gut should have told him that if he didn't like Bush's policy there, he shouldn't expect anything new and different from the folks who have a vested interest in seeing their initial folly through to some 'success' or 'victory'. It was always a crap shoot that we'd foster some kind of popular government there which would lead the citizens away from the negative influences in the Taliban.

I think even Bush knew that there wasn't any point in trying to 'win' there. He was just holding the U.S. place in the country and the region. His idea was that our presence would prevent others, like China, Russia, and possibly Iran from taking advantage of the power vacuum left by our overthrow and rout of the Taliban. Here comes Mr. Obama looking to 'solve' Afghanistan, when there never was an honest line between Bush's aims there and the rhetoric and justifications he used that President Obama has adopted as his own justification for continuing.

[laststeamtrain]

5. From the president that wasn't. Probably would have been the last decent one.

Asked how he would get out of Afghanistan if he were president, McGovern said:

“I would say to the Afghan people that ‘we’ve been here for eight years, and we’ve come to the conclusion we can’t resolve your problems. You’ve got the Taliban, you may have al-Qaida, but—our soldiers have fought, died bravely—but it’s my conclusion, as president of the United States, that we can’t resolve the problems here. We’ll do what we can to help you, but we can’t do it with our military forces. As a matter of fact, while we’ve been here, the Taliban have grown stronger, and we don’t know where al-Qaida is—we think they’re in Pakistan—but having our troops in Afghanistan is not going to help that. So it’s our judgment that the best thing for us, and maybe for you, is for you to take over the handling of your own problems.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091103_mcgovern_get_out_of_afghanistan/

No muss, no fuss.

[Overseas]

15. K&R. //nt

[arcadian]

6. We've heard the stupid chess analogy a million times.

By the way, I never bought the Lincoln bull shit either, though the Obama team rammed that down our throats as well.

[KittyWampus]

8. Actually, Lincoln didn't solve the Civil War problem in a week and without tragic mistakes.

[boomerbust]

7. We hired

The right man for the job. No doubt about it.

[ginnyinWI]

9. I agree, but it's too bad every good Dem President has to

spend so much of his term cleaning up elephant dung.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

10. Shrub went into Afghanistan because that's what the corporate masters had him to do, and Obama is

continuing that legacy. Gut and head have nothing to do with it.

Out of both wars now!

[mopinko]

11. sad to see so many here taking the media view of things.

from the link-

"The public debate over Afghanistan has focused on whether Obama should authorize more troops. The actual decision is vastly more complicated. Whatever the president chooses to do, he must bring on board as many allies as possible, which means getting a buy-in from Congress, his Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the bean counters who budget military action, NATO, various dyspeptic European leaders, the generals in the theater, the troops on the ground, the sketchy Afghan leadership, the Pakistanis and so on. He must also sell his plan to the American people, convincing the right that he's tough enough to fight and the left that he knows where the exit is."

at least the man is a grown up. not surprised many people here have no clue what that means, or what it is good for. hint- it isn't the black and white simpleton world of the news machine.

[HughMoran]

12. I read here yesterday that the deliberations are "just for show"

...and that he made up his mind weeks ago.

There's no reasoning with people who haven't experienced the nirvana they expected in our new utopia.

[BREMPRO]

13. Damned if you do, damned if you don't . At least he's deliberative

and I trust he's carefully and thoroughly looked at ALL the options and consequences (for Afghanistan, Pakistan and American security and costs of soldiers lives and to the taxpayers). This is not just about tactics or numbers, it's long term strategy for the region and our national security. I'm glad he's taken time- at least until Karzai is sworn in and makes some promises to reduce corruption. Very curious to hear his speech justifying the strategy and what he says our goals are.

[jmondine]

14. Abraham Lincoln didn't live up to his own legend in his first year

The Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg were still a long ways off. Grant was stalled in the West, and McClellan was dragging his feet in Virginia. Meanwhile, the Confederate generals under Lee were launching one of the most brilliant military campaigns in history.

[butterfly77]

16. Too bad everyone..

thinks they are speaking for him and a lot of people are acting as though he said what a lot of these talking heads are saying word for word on every issue. " I like to know what I am talking about before I speak" something which the media never does they report on leaks and speculation.

Rick Sanchez came on air yesterday reporting what the President was going to do as though he told him personally and then he had his glad on his nose like Charley Gibson for effect trying to intiate outrage at whatever decision the president made.

Scarborough goes on television every morning and tries to tell us what the president is thinking,what America is thinking and Politico reporters as though he told them personally and as though they have been talking to every American personally.

The only Americans Scar is talking about are red state,rich,poor stupid, illinformed,uneducated,ignorant Americans..

[optimator]

17. who cares about style when its the same policies

I expect the obama cheerleaders to apologize to bush since obama reached the conclusion that Al-qaeda 9-11 blah blah blah is the reason to flush trillions more down the toilet.

[EFerrari]

18. Wilentz is off. Obama may only be suffering from the logical consequences

of the images his campaign put out. If "people" were comparing Obama to Lincoln, that meant some of Obama's campaign dollars took, that's all. It doesn't sum to unrealistic expectations from "those who put him in office" -- most of whom have plenty of experience with PR campaigns.

I also have a problem with caution and compromise being tossed into the same bag. It would be nice if our new president was cautious as he navigates the cesspool Junior left. Compromise is another matter. It's not surprising that people feel upset about a "compromise" process that excludes them since the base's seat at the table has been relocated to the doghouse.

[Cha]

19. Whatever happens I know

it will be from thinking about the best possible way to resolve this horrible quagmire.

[alfredo]

20. I remember when he got elected to the Senate. DU'ers hoped he would be

a progressive, but were quickly disappointed in the fact that he was a moderate. Even after his voting record confirmed his moderate credentials, people kept believing he was Liberal.

[JuniperLea]

21. "Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office"

Sums it up nicely.

[Hansel]

26. He suffers from unrealistic expectations among the media which

in turns suffers from a simplistic and juvenile interpretation of what the people who put him in office expected of him. Unlike Sarah Palin supporters (who really believe she is the messiah) the people who supported Obama were not openly bragging that he was. They were only accused of it.

This is another example of the media making up a premise about a group of people and then making up a news story of how this made up premise has impacted these people. How their expectations have been deflated because they were so unrealistic.

As one of the people who helped put him in office, I had nor have no unrealistic expectations of him. He has inherited an extreme mess which is going to take more than 10 months to fix, and he has an extremely rude, loud and juvenile opposing party that works against and bitch about everything his says and does. This coupled with a incompetent news media and millions of corporate dollars worth of propaganda being launched against everything he tries to do on a daily basis. On top of that are supporters of other Democratic candidates who think he shouldn't have gotten the nomination in the first place and are happy to pretend that they are the Obama supporters who are disillusioned by him.

Our media continues to suck and is incapable of doing analysis. So what else is new?

[JuniperLea]

30. Excellent summation, Hansel!

That's exactly how I see it, and I appreciate your putting it into words.

[treestar]

23. Great. Having a President who uses his head rather than his "gut"

was one of the reasons I like Obama. Sometimes your "gut" can be right or lead you in a good direction, but it is no substitute for thought, which seemed to be the case for Bush. He just wasn't really bothering.

[zeemike]

24. Being deliberative and dealing with facts is a good thing.

But the outcome of those decisions will be only as good as the facts that are fed to you by an enormous government system....and remembering that bush had 8 years to staff it with his idealogical followers, Obama has his work cut out for him.

If he is sincere about what he said in the campaign and can pull it off he will go down in history as the cleverest president no doubt. and perhaps the luckiest.

[Scurrilous]

25. K & R

:thumbsup:

[debbierlus]

27. From his appointments of Rahm Emanuel to Timothy Geithner...

From his wholesale sellout of health care to the corporations....(he didn't even BEGIN to fight)....

To his phony bipartisanship with Republicans for political cover....

To his complete disregard for the liberals and progressive who were key in electing him....

Obama has failed us. This has nothing to do with living up to falsely high expectations. Jesus christ. This has to do with living up to the most basic expectations.

[LibDemAlways]

29. "complete disregard for the liberals and progressives"

Yep. If he keeps on the course he has set, the people who worked their asses off to get him elected will be looking elsewhere or sitting 2012 out.

All this talk of careful deliberation, and he's missing the obvious. You won't get re-elected without your base.

[jus_the_facts]

28. A politician ...who'd ever expect one to live up to their rhetoric...

:evilgrin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DS4xVcko9qw