All this, if it is roughly correct, is going to make the president’s
speech tonight quite remarkable. It will be a White House address in
which a president argues for an endeavor he is abandoning. It will be a
president appealing for public support for an action he intends not to
take.
We’ve never had a presidential speech like that!
So what will he say? Some guesses.
He will not really be trying to “convince the public.” He will be
trying to move the needle a little, which will comfort those who want to
say he retains a matchless ability to move the masses. It will make
him feel better. And it will send the world the message: Hey, this
isn’t a complete disaster. The U.S. president still has some juice, and
that juice can still allow him to surprise you, so watch it.
He will attempt to be morally compelling and rhetorically memorable.
He will probably, like Susan Rice yesterday, attempt to paint a graphic
portrait of what chemical weapons do—the children in their shrouds, the
suffering parents, what such deaths look like and are. This is not
meaningless: the world must be reminded what weapons of mass
destruction are, and what the indifference of the world foretells.
He will claim the moral high ground. He will temporarily reserve the
use of force and welcome recent diplomatic efforts. He will suggest it
was his threat of force that forced a possible diplomatic solution.
His people will be all over the airwaves saying it was his deft
leadership and steely-eyed threat to use force that allowed for a
diplomatic break.
The real purpose of the speech will be to lay the predicate for a
retrospective judgment of journalists and, later, historians. He was
the president who warned the world and almost went—but didn’t go—to war
to make a point that needed making.
Before or after the speech there will be some quiet leaking to the
press that yes, frankly, the president, with so many difficult domestic
issues facing him and Congress in the fall, wanted, sympathetically, to
let lawmakers off the hook. They never wanted to vote on this.
Once that was true, they didn’t. But now, having seen the polls and
heard from their constituents, a lot of them are raring to go,
especially Republicans. It is Democrats who were caught in the
crosshairs between an antiwar base and a suddenly hawkish president.
But again, a Democratic White House can’t admit it put its people in a
fix like that.
In any case it’s good for America that we’ve dodged either bad
outcome: Congress votes no and the president moves anyway, or Congress
votes no and he doesn’t. Both possibilities contained dangers for
future presidents.
The president will assert that as a lover of peace he welcomes the
Russian move and reports of the positive Syrian reaction, that he will
closely monitor the situation, set deadlines. He will speak of how he
understands the American people, after the past 12 years, after previous
and painful mistakes by their leaders, would feel so reluctant for any
military engagement. He not only understands this reluctance, he shares
it. He knows he was elected, in part, because he would not think of
war as the first, or even second or third, option. But he has a higher
responsibility now, and it is to attempt to warn the world of the moral
disaster of the use of weapons of mass destruction. If we don’t move in
the firmest opposition our children will face a darker future.
The speech will end. Polls will be taken. Maybe a mild uptick,
maybe a flatline. Probably more or less the latter—people have made up
their mind. They sense the crisis has passed or is passing. They’re
not keen for more presidential rhetoric.
* * *
Then get ready for the spin job of all spin jobs. It’s already
begun: the White House is beginning to repeat that a diplomatic solution
only came because the president threatened force. That is going to be
followed by something that will grate on Republicans, conservatives, and
foreign-policy journalists and professionals. But many Democrats will
find it sweet, and some in the political press will go for it, if for no
other reason than it’s a new story line.
It is that Syria was not a self-made mess, an example of historic
incompetence. It was Obama’s Cuban Missile Crisis—high-stakes,
eyeball-to-eyeball, with weapons of mass destruction and an implacable
foe. The steady waiting it out, the inner anguish, the idea that
crosses the Telex that seems to soften the situation. A cool,
calibrated, chancy decision to go with the idea, to make a measured
diplomatic concession. In the end it got us through the crisis.
Really, they’re going to say this. And only in part because this
White House is full of people who know nothing—really nothing—about
history. They’ve only seen movies.
The only question is who plays Bobby. Get ready for a leak war between Kerry’s staff and Hillary Clinton’s.
An important thing. The president will be tempted, in his
embarrassment, to show a certain dry and contemplative distance from
Putin. The Obama White House should go lightly here: Putin could
always, in his pique, decide to make things worse, not better. It would
be good for Obama to show graciousness and appreciation. Yes, this
will leave Putin looking and feeling good. But that’s not the worst
thing that ever happened. And Putin has played this pretty well.
Related:
http://tinyurl.com/q2cbkyg
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