Thin Skin in the Game of National Security

I was in Tulsa on Friday taking care of a bit of business, eating at P.F. Changs, and spending an hour in chapel at my old parish, but I did get to hear a good portion of former Vice President Dick Cheney's AEI speech. (It would be a few hours later before I could review President Obama's version of the national security truth).

What struck me forcefully with the Cheney speech was my own reaction to what he had to say. I've always been a semi-agnostic on Dick Cheney: I didn't think he was the monster that the left and the media tried to portray him as, but I also didn't think his public persona was very helpful to his old boss. On Thursday, my perception changed. There was conviction in his voice. His words laid out a logical world view, one that I could understand and respect.

Compared to the self-serving, thin-skinned, theoretical weasel words of virtually every current politician in Washington, Dick Cheney stood like a giant among quarreling children.

A grownup was in town.

I happened to be inside a McDonald's enjoying a late burrito breakfast watching Cheney on a big screen TV, and I couldn't help but watch the other customers react to his words. At the end of his speech, several broke into applause. In a McDonald's! I'd never seen that before.

Later, watching the president, I realized that Barack Obama shares a common trait with the late Richard Nixon. Thin skin. Nixon didn't like criticism and brooded over perceived insults and critical comments from media pundits. He kept an enemies list. While he didn't have Obama's rhetorical skills, Nixon had his occasional moments of scripted eloquence but he preferred the "behind the scenes" of giving orders and getting results fed back to him. He preferred private control over public spontaneity.

It would not surprise me to learn that Barack Obama has an enemies list. Or that his brain trust, his handlers, have such a list. His speech, delivered in front of a fake Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (although it wasn't shown), was defensive from start to finish. It was a rebuttal speech, even though it was given in advance of Cheney's talk. Rebutting whom?

Perhaps the U.S. Senate. Members of his own party voted a resolution denying him the money he sought to close the Guatanamo prison. It went further than that. It states that no money will be forthcoming to transfer prisoners to the U.S. mainland. There were also statements from people like Harry Reid declaring that no money would be forthcoming to an administration that acted without thinking, without a plan.

The old saying, "The president proposes, Congress disposes," still applies. The constitutional separation of powers remains a stumbling block to unfettered "leadership."

So what does President Obama do?

He puts himself in front of the U.S. Constitution and then declares that Guantanamo prisoners are coming to the United States, at least some of them. Damn the Constitution, damn the Congress, full speed ahead!

The problem with the Gitmo prisoners, Obama declared, "is not my decision to close Guantanamo" but the decision to open Guatanamo in the first place. (Translation: It's Bush's fault, and I'm justified in doing what I want.)

What will happen when the public doesn't turn around on this issue, and the Democrat-led Congress, which has no stomach for tough fights with voters, doesn't cave in to Obama's desires in this matter? Will he move the prisoners anyway?

I'm afraid that he has an overwhelming need to win, and such an underwhelming appreciation of our venerable constitution, that he may attempt to "executive order" his way through this thing, to prove his superiority; to assert control.

I do not think the American people will stand still for this. They have been willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on many an issue, but on national security -- particularly issues of public safety related to terrorists like the ones who struck on 9-11 -- the American people remember. It hasn't been that long ago.

Obama asserts that the previous Administration made life worse for Americans by angering the cultured sensitivities of Europeans, and pissing off peace-loving Muslims by running roughshod over the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammad. His new way will make people like us, he claims, and we will be happier with ourselves.

Perhaps. But after 9-11 while we suffered a few indignities at our airports, we were not attacked again under the rules laid out by the Bush administration. Mr. Obama is changing the rules of the game, and is betting that the other side will appreciate his modern sophistication in doing so. This is a critical bet that he is making, and while it's his reputation at stake, also on the line are American lives and the American way of life.

In his speech, Obama said, "my single most important responsibility as president is to keep the American people safe. ... We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history. We know that al-Qaida is actively planning to attack us again. We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it."

Americans will remember that statement if he is wrong in his bet and we suffer a terrorist attack. They will remember that he closed Gitmo, outlawed "enhanced interrogation techniques," and spent a considerable amount of time traveling the globe apologizing for the evils of America past. They will remember that he is cutting the defense budget at the same time he is running up unparalleled deficit spending.

They will also remember that he wrapped himself in the Constitution -- using it as a focus-group defined prop -- even as he was violating its spirit by exceeding his authority as president to push government's influence over vital sectors of the American economy.

It is a very dangerous bet in a very dangerous game.

God save the United States of America.