Agreed.  Unless Obama is an idiot-- which he has never demonstrated himself to be-- he will never let Iraq fall during his first term and almost guarantee himself one term only.

That's interesting. I'm pretty sure Ross Douthat just described heaven.

To the right of the center-left is the middle. So the claim is that Obama will have a moderate foreign policy bent. This should be news to absolutely no one.

Otherwise, it's a pretty good capsule by Douthat.

"Obama won't win the conservative punditry regardless of what he does..." Why should he care? Until they come up with valid (i.e. post-1980) ideas that a broad spectrum of the electorate deems plausible and honest, "conservative punditry" is a synonym for "trolls." Douthat writes as if the right matters.

Don't feed the trolls, Barack.

I don't see why Douthat's, um, "analysis" is all that smart.  Five months ago Hitchens already noted that Obama's foreign policy does not really sit will on a right-left axis, that he is no knee-jerk pacifist, that his instincts are not "against force" but against a dumb use of force.  Funny, because that was also what Obama said back in 2002, when he was a wee state Senator.

I mean, remember the whole brouhaha about Pakistan?  He was vilified by POWPOW as being *too* easily ready to bomb "our allies".

So, at the end of the day, Hitchens and now Douthat manage to divine, through their powers of analysis and their incomparable perspicacity, what Obama expressly set out six years ago.  Jeez.  Slow news day, what.

icarusr and the rest, you are conveniently ignoring that at during the primaries, Obama was promising in no uncertain terms to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by date certain in 2009.

That was not wise.  And it has gone away.  Now other dates further out are being specified, but always with caveats about the situation on the ground.

In the wake of the Surge, it looks like that situation will be fine.

I still suspect that we will have significant bases in Iraq for a long time.

icarusr  said

"So, at the end of the day, Hitchens and now Douthat manage to divine, through their powers of analysis and their incomparable perspicacity, what Obama expressly set out six years ago."

I see, all leftists  voted for Obama and against Clinton because they expected that  Obama foreign policy will end cutting to the right of Bill Clinton's foreign policy,

ChanRobt  said

"Obama was promising in no uncertain terms"

Obama never ever promises anything in no uncertain terms. There is also a fine print.

No, Obama said 16 months to get forces out of Iraq. Sixteen months from Jan. 20, 2009 puts it at June 2010.

Which, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman says, is doable.

"I see, all leftists  voted for Obama and against Clinton because they expected that  Obama foreign policy will end cutting to the right of Bill Clinton's foreign policy."

No, they voted for Obama and against Clinton because they expected that Obama's foreign policy would end up cutting to the left of the foreign policy of a Hillary Clinton administration.  (They are, technically speaking, two separate people.)  

I think it's a pretty safe prediction, and one that will probably be met with approval with most readers of TNR. Not many here are the MoveOn type, and it's good to see that Obama's head is where it belongs -- on Earth. I must say I'm pretty overjoyed at seeing a Democratic administration learn from the failures of some past administrations. I'm NOT overjoyed at Hillary/SoS, but I think she would be a better pick than some other names that were bandied about -- Chuck Hagel, anyone? But oh well, my dream of a Dennis Ross-led Foggy Bottom was just that, a dream.

-- Even with the GOP brand in the toilet, Republicans are still trusted as much or more than Dems on foreign policy, mostly for somewhat nebulous "toughness" reasons. --

What immediately comes to mind is when I was in a bar in Addison, a high-class suburb of Dallas, on the evening Bush announced the U.S. was going to war in Iraq, and a bunch of guys were hootin' and hollerin' "Yeah!" like a bunch of Cowboys fans on game day. I was drunk and gladly yelled "Nothing like a bunch of armchair warmongers who love war to death just as long as they don't have to fight in it." Suffice to say, I got in a shouting match with 2-3 of these chickenhawks, and not a single one was able to out-debate me on my point. So, yeah, "toughness" rings their bells without a single valid reason to back it up; their myopic machismo is easily fed with even the mangiest and meager logical underpinnings.

Chan, again with the ominous Date Certain™ stuff, as if Obama wanted to carve some date into stone and have every U.S. soldier out by then no matter what.  Like many things alleged about Obama during the election (e.g. claims that he's a protectionist, or that he wants to bring back the fairness doctrine), this was a fantasy of the Right, who needed Obama to be their cut-and-run bogeyman (and perhaps  some on the Left who wanted a champion committed to getting the hell out of Iraq).  If you actually paid attention to the things he said and did, it was clear the whole time that he wanted to get out, and that he wanted to do so carefully and quickly.

As for Douthat's assertion, I'm not sure what exactly it would mean for Obama to cut to Bill Clinton's right on f-p, or even how to compare today's challenges to those faced by Clinton.

Alan, right. Like 1994 is 2009.  The problems in the balkans are pretty much gone, China's economy was 1/4 of what it is now, GM was the worlds largest auto producer, etc. If you only want to compare left and right to willingness to use force then that is kind of silly. There are a lot of other measuring sticks as well, from Kissengers real politick to Bush's God wants me to do it. I have no idea how the next 4 years will play out, but to compare it endlessly with Clinton will get old quick.

Democrats (and others) voted for Obama because they expected that he might cut toward a foreign policy that made strategic sense.

I doubt if Obama will be able to tilt the Supreme Court leftward over the next eight years because the justices most likely to retire due to advanced age, Stevens and Ginsberg, are liberals to begin with. The youngest justices, Thomas, Roberts and Alito, are all conservative, and Scalia appears to be in good health.

Yes, nbarry, but doesn't Scalia go hunting with Cheney a lot?

nbarry, good point about the justices.  You make me feel better.

We should probably take pause to point out that discussing American foreign policy as if there is a simple left-right axis is really quite sloppy. From the Progressive era on there has never been an easily identifiable left or right foreign policy. Those generally on the right domestically have been some of our biggest hawks and some of our most ardent isolationists. Those on the domestic left have ranged from isolationism to human rights interventionism to hawkishness. This left-right silliness is more a reflection of various culture wars than it is an accurate reflection of the spectrum of foreign policy views.

dcat