Those of you who drop by regularly know that I am a Charles Krauthammer groupie. I dearly love this guy’s mind. But his column in the Washington Post this week disappointed me. In it he argues that all of the grousing about the cost of Obama’s trip to Asia is silly and vindictive. That every American president deserves to travel with the best protection we can provide.
Charles, you cannot have missed this. It’s not about protection. Even the President’s most ardent political foe would not deny him that. Absolutely no one wants to see the President reduced to flying commercial and without his entourage. It is not about any of that.
It is about the party. This president seems to have been on an extended vacation since we gave him the keys to the White House. Whether it is simply public perception or actuality, this president and his better half seem to be in a remake of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The overwhelming sense within the American psyche is that he accomplishes absolutely nothing when he is traveling on our dime.
In his first year alone Barack Obama made more trips abroad than any other U.S. president in history; 10 trips to 21 countries. One was to pick up his much deserved Nobel Prize, I’ll grant you, but other than that …
And it’s not even the trips so much as it is the wasted trips. Remember the quick turnaround? The Olympics fiasco, then the Climate Change Congress? Three trips to Scandinavia inside two months. The list is enormous.
This latest adventure was to stimulate trade with India and negotiate the free trade deal with South Korea. Which was news to the Indians and Koreans; they thought he was coming to ask for a loan. On his last trip to Japan the emperor somehow got the idea he came for a shiatsu massage.
Krauthammer argues: “Presidential visits are the highest form of diplomacy, and the symbolism alone carries enormous weight.” Oh really? I beg to differ. Every time this neophyte travels abroad this nation loses a little more face. He has become a laughingstock in Europe and Asia.
The columnist goes on to say that the trip to India was necessary in order for Obama to repair the mess he caused during his first visit to China, a make-up trip to essentially say, “I was new; I screwed up.” Is that what we are to believe, Charles? That Barack has somehow grown in the job enough to un-strike the match he lit under Sino-Indian relations?
Nuh-huh. I ain’t buying it. I gotta tell you, Charles, no one has reason to trust anything this man says. He loves the sound of words slipping off his silver tongue, but they are more often than not thoughtless and naïve.
Krauthammer adds: “We [the U.S. and India] both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China.” And didn’t Barack do a splendid job with his jihad statement? Splendid, I tell you. India has cause to feel safer now that Indian Muslim imams are appeased.
The Asia trip was a complete waste of taxpayer dollars by a man completely out of his depth. A sincere email would have served the United States’ interests better. Yes, yes, I know he looked cool—which somehow has become a requisite for presidents—but he accomplished virtually nothing. He failed in South Korea, India has no great cause for elation, and the entire developed world dog piled on him in favor of China.
No, Charles, the President’s critics aren’t so ticked about the travel expenses as we are the fact that he has a complete lack of understanding of his position as the world’s most powerful leader. For the next trip he would do us all a favor by cutting the BS and saying Michelle wants to see the Paris spring line. I think we can live with that.
Left Coast Ledger 