I wrote an article 3½ years ago, at a low moment in Obama's first term, when his ratings tanked and his party just lost Edward Kennedy's senate seat to a Republican, that usefully suggested that Obama could "salvage his tottering administration" by taking "dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations." He could do well and do good, I offered, by taking out the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
Well, as the world knows, he did not follow my advice. But the time has come to crank it out again at a moment when Obama seems close to imploding. As the distinguished historian Andrew Roberts puts it in the July/August issue of the British magazine Standpoint, he is
credibly accused by the internal opposition of serious civil liberties violations, the secret seizure of journalists' phone and email records, the illegal use of the state tax authorities to harass citizens, a full-scale government cover-up over the circumstances of four murders and the "systematic targeting" of news organisations. …
this summer Barack Obama has no fewer than four separate scandals pending, which are collectively referred to as "Obamagate". Astonishingly, less than a year after his re-election, we may be witnessing the unravelling of the Obama presidency.
Given this background, I propose that (updating my 2010 article) a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama's feckless fifth year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline immigration reform, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, make netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon. (June 27, 2013)
