Charles Krauthammer faults the Obama administration’s reflexive resort to euphemism and obfuscation. Fair enough. I agree that the truth matters – and euphemism annoys.
But what really seems to bug him, after he has taken a few warm-up shots at “reduction in staff” (evacuation), “man-caused disasters” (terror attacks), “workplace violence” (Nidal Hasan’s mowing down 13 people), is this bugaboo: “violent extremism.”
It’s not all that clear what term Krauthammer would prefer. “A radically fundamentalist vision of Islam” and “murderous quest for dominion over all others” do not come trippingly off the tongue, and suffer from rhetorical bloat as surely as “violent extremism” suffers from indirection. He pretty clearly wants the term “Islamist” to be involved, but as what: a noun or an adjective? I get the feeling he wants us to wage a holy war against Islam, but for what holy faith would we be fighting? Christianity, which Krauthammer does not (if memory serves) profess? Judaism, which he (presumably, in some form) does? Judeo-Christianity, the sterile cross-breed?
Does he really want us to define this war in terms that are apt to turn all Muslims, not just violent extremists, against us?
Compared with Mr. Clinton, Obama “had less capacity to put himself in the minds of his opponents, to understand where they were coming from and why,” Mr. Balz writes.
(Peggy Noonan, reviewing Dan Balz’s Collision 2012, which she calls “the best presidential campaign chronicle in many years.”)
This seems a most strange indictment. If there’s one thing about Obama’s intellect I’ve admired, it’s his ability to make the arguments of his opponents more articulately than they make them. He then imperiously rejects them, for reasons unknown and unarticulated, but that’s a fault that I wouldn’t describe in terms of low (or at least lower than Clinton) “capacity to put himself in the minds of his opponents.” It’s more like aloofness, bordering on the reptilian. (I’m grasping for words like Krauthammer here.)
Noonan goes on to summarize some of how Team Obama came up with a political message, if not actual policies, that resonated with the middle class and blind-sided Mitt Romney.
If political campaign books is the sort of thing you go for, then it sounds like Dan Balz has a tasty morsel for you.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 