Actions that need more explanation

Submitted by Richard Stoecker (United States), Nov 4, 2012 at 11:43

Superficiality is the right word, all right; Alexander Solzhenitsyn once commented that the greatest problem in modern society is superficiality. One reason so many people get so irritated with the media is that political talking heads focus so much on process over issues, appearance (President Obama's "body language" in the first debate) over substance.

I disagree that it is irrelevant whether Gov. Romney outsourced jobs while at Bain Capital because outsourcing is among the chief causes of our unemployment, however, globalism is a fact of life--even Obama once admitted that many of the jobs that have gone overseas are never coming back.

The media ought to have held Obama's feet to the fire a little more about that $4 trillion dollars added to the national debt during his administration. How does one blow $4 trillion dollars? I feel bad if I spend $10 on something that doesn't work. We have a general sense that Obama's solution to the national debt is--what else--to keep spending.

Romney could have done a lot more in the debate on foreign affairs about the mishandling of the Benghazi events.

During a campaign, Obama somehow seems to make himself sound like the best friend Israel ever had, one highly conscious of the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance, but anyone who has followed the events of his administration knows he is the most anti-Israel president we have ever had. Many examples could be given. It has been well said of Obama that he treats our friends abroad like enemies, and our enemies like friends--consider his approach to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and even his attempts at outreach to Iran, the government that presents more danger to the U.S. than any other. I guess he treats the Europeans all right--but that is usually a bad sign, if the Europeans like a president or candidate.

President Obama has somehow managed to be both interventionist (encouraging Mubarak of Egypt, Ghaddafi of Libya and others to "step down" and intevening in a limited way militarily in Libya, pressuring Israel to give up more land to the Palestinians) and passive and hesitant in his foreign policy, for example, in having a section dealing with the persecution of Christians in the Mideast, at an all-time high, taken out of a State Department Report, and I have wondered also why reparations were not demanded from countries that vandalized U.S. embassies, since these embassies are property of the United States. What would have happened if U.S. embassies had been trashed when Harry Truman was President?

We can get in trouble as a nation either by being overly active militarily, when there are definitely places where the best course is to be neutral in our national interest, and abuse of our power engenders resentment in other countries. How I wish when there was unrest in Egypt, instead of suggesting that Mubarak step down, Obama had insisted on neutrality and refused to make comments other than diplomatically phrased ones, which I know he can do when he wants to.

In campaign ads, Obama has said that after his years in office, "You know me." That's just it--there are so many things, even after a term in office, that we don't know about him. We know he has charisma, but unsavory characters can have that.

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