Obama: An Incompetent Traitor?

Obama is incompetent. Obama is a wimp. The bitter partisans of the right have been pushing these memes hard. It makes me wonder whether they know there's a reality beyond Fox News. True, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has provided conservatives fodder, for perhaps the president could have done something sooner to deal with this tragedy (though who knows what would have led to a faster or better remedy). But leave it to the right -- which tends to oppose government efforts to better regulate corporations -- to hyper-ventilate about Obama's alleged culpability and lack of fortitude.

Dick Morris, the consultant-turned-kvetch, recently provided a fine example of this:

Conservatives are so enraged at Barack Obama's socialism and radicalism that they are increasingly surprised to learn that he is incompetent, as well. The sight of his blithering and blustering while the most massive oil spill in history moves closer to America's beaches not only reminds one of George W. Bush's terrible performance during Katrina, but calls to mind Jimmy Carter's incompetence in the face of the hostage crisis.

As for the Obama's-a-girly-man narrative, conservative writer Andrew McCarthy, in an interview with BigJournalism.com, a conservative site, declared, "Our political leadership won't come to grips with the fact that we have enemies." And during that interview -- in which McCarthy was promoting a book he had written -- the site's editor, Michael Walsh, asked, in all seriousness, if Obama is some kind of "Manchurian Muslim." Walsh went on to suggest that Obama is practically in league with "the global Islamist movement," noting that Obama and Saudi King Abdullah "share a common goal of radically transforming the West. Even though they part company on the details of what they would transform it into, they both need to topple American constitutional republicanism in order to install their utopias."

This is head-spinning stuff: an inept president who is so dense he doesn't realize the United States has enemies but who is cleverly scheming to overthrow the U.S. government from within. It sure ain't coherent or consistent.

Nevertheless, I am curious about what such conservatives think when they read newspaper articles -- I assume they read newspapers -- such as the one that appeared on the front page of The Washington Post on Saturday. Headlined "U.S. 'secret war' expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role," the story began:

Beneath its commitment to soft-spoken diplomacy and beyond the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups, according to senior military and administration officials.

It's well-known that the use of CIA drone attacks against al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders has expanded under Obama. (Recently al-Qaeda's No. 3 leader was reportedly killed by a CIA drone.) But there's more: the Post piece noted that Obama is making greater use of Special Operations forces in the global fight against extremists. Obama, has allowed "things that the previous administration did not," one senior military official told the paper.

There's an argument to be made against the drone attacks -- the U.N. released a critical report last week -- and Special Ops can produce unintended consequences and dangerous blowback. But whether they are right or wrong, are these the policies of a president who doesn't believe the United States is threatened by enemies? (By the way, will Dick Cheney ever retract his claim that the "Obama people" don't believe they need "tough policies" to counter terrorists?)

As for the incompetence accusation, Obama did pass almost a trillion dollars in stimulus spending that by many economists' calculations prevented the economy from shedding another 2 million or so jobs. He achieved what no president has accomplished in modern times: enactment of comprehensive health care reform. (Here's a question for Morris: How could a bumbler orchestrate a government takeover of the health care system?) Wall Street reform is also on track for final passage.

We can quibble about all the policy details -- and I do -- but this is a hefty short list of successes. Like many commentators, I believe Obama did not sufficiently demonstrate leadership in the initial days of the BP catastrophe. But an incompetent weakling? Can right-wing blowhards get away with such absurd hyperbole? The answer, alas, is yes. Everyday, I receive e-mails from conservative outfits dishing out these kinds of accusations about Obama. It's good for business -- their business, literally. They all miss -- by design -- an obvious point: sometimes a fella can be wrong without being a total numbskull, a closet traitor, or both. Even a president.

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