It's not. I "empathize" with Obama's difficulties just as much as VDH does.
We've all been confronted from time to time by what we've said we would do, and discovering that things are not so simple after all -- the real world rarely cooperates with our assumptions; and in cases where we are faced with actual nemeses, "the world" often actively opposes our assumptions.
Obama's love of the Grand Gesture has certainly set him up for tremendous difficulties in that regard, and VDH has correctly pointed that out: NK and Iran are out for themseves, which places them in dangerous opposition to the civilized world; and Obama's words can do nothing to prevent it.
VDH is also quite correct in pointing out a true fact about American politics: political opposition has decayed to a groups of politicians who "adopting simplistic answers as a candidate that [they] could not possibly embrace as Commander-in-Chief..."
Which is to say, we live in a nation governed by political opportunists whose devotion to principles of statesmanship is tenuous at best.
Obama can expect little if any cooperation from the GOP, even if he's got good ideas.
And, as we've already seen, any aggressive move that the GOP might support, brings cries of outrage from Obama's base.
The ghastly state of contemporary political discourse would seem to preclude even honest debate, much less useful discussion.
Obama is in a very, very difficult position. And if he is, we are.
What’s wrong with empathy? You would like to be president right now to have to deal with Iran and North Korea? I wouldn’t, so I guess I have empathy for Obama too. Big deal.
The great empath chose to put himself in this absurd position.
I wish there were a coterie of "Scoop Jackson Democrats" today.
They had Joe Lieberman, but they gave him the boot.
We are in trouble, as you point out, because politics makes hash of any national defense policies.