Obama’s Chicago Presidency

[Geee]

National Review:

What you can do if you don’t care what anybody says.

Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) was a vocal critic both of President Obama’s executive-action opening to Cuba and his nuclear non-proliferation talks with Iran. In the midst of his loud opposition, he found himself suddenly the target of renewed federal charges that had aired much earlier without consequence. I think the message was not that the administration was worried over appearances, but rather that it wished to remind all of Washington that it actually welcomed the appearance of not being worried over the idea of federal prosecutorial power being used for tit-for-tat vendettas. Malice is a valuable political tool for Barack Obama.

 

Benjamin Netanyahu apparently bothered President Obama. What could that possibly entail, given the historic alliance between Israel and the United States? From the petty malice of Obama-administration aides leaking slurs that Netanyahu was a coward and chickens–t to the fundamental malevolence of community-organizing Netanyahu’s opponents in an effort to defeat him at the polls to leaking previously classified information about Israel’s nuclear deterrent, the message is again Chicagoan. Obama in adolescent fashion put it best in the 2008 campaign when he urged his flock, “I want you to argue with them and get in their face,” and when he later lifted a Chicago line from screenwriter David Mamet’s dialogue in The Untouchables to say to his base, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” No wonder Obama — despite having once been on the receiving end of a racial slur from Senator Harry Reid — recently praised the outgoing Senate majority leader, whose style and modus operandi were akin to Obama’s own.