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Since I have this dreadful commute now, and I really can’t take Mark Levin (I love the guy, but he makes me crazed) I’ve been listening to the re-run of Michael Smerconish (sp?) on sirius POTUS channel.

He’s really pretty much an idiot, but I thought he made almost a good point yesterday. He said that the polls show that people disapprove of Obama’s handling of foreign affairs, but yet if given a choice they would chose to do, or not do, what Obama is doing or not doing.

Now, I did not hear the whole segment, so I’m not sure where he ended up going with it, but it seems to me the big problem people are starting to have with Obama is that he just doesn’t seem to care, at all, about anything.

And you know, I don’t think he does.

The radio personality is correct, the country has come to understand that wars on foreign soil, especially wars of nationbuilding, are ineffectual in defeating terrorism, costly in blood and treasure, and virtually feckless in the ambition to install democracy in a Muslim culture which is simply not advanced enough to accept it. Worse, fighting wars in Iraq or even in Afghanistan have no discernible relationship to preventing 19 terrorists with box cutters from attacking America.

There are, however, two very serious reservations to this reality:

First, the essential rationalization for the Iraq war remains: An Islamicist regime in possession of atomic weapons represents an existential threat to the United States because it might well pass those weapons off to terrorists who smuggle them into the homeland where they might be detonated. A series of American cities incinerated might well lead to surrender to the tyranny of sharia.

Therefore, Iran simply cannot be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.

Second, Ronald Reagan in the Cold War and George W. Bush after 9/11, faced an analogous challenge to the world that confronts Barack Obama. Reagan faced an adversary bent on destroying America but one which he simply could not engage on the battlefield because of the reality of nuclear weapons. So he started by establishing moral clarity: "we win, they lose." He followed moral rearmament up with actual rearmament. Finally, he deployed every conceivable non-belligerent weapon against the Soviet Union until it broke.

George W. Bush reacted in much the same way. He asserted moral clarity: "you are either for us or against us." He supported and grew the military and acceded to the professionalism of his generals. He persevered in the face of daunting obstacles in Iraq war and courageously authorized a successful "surge" which effectively won the war. He failed, however, to keep the people with him in the face of determined Democrat and media obstruction.

When people say that the country reacts against Obama but supports his passive policies, what they mean is they are reacting viscerally against his moral incoherence. They sense that he has no acceptable worldview that leads to the survival of the country in the face of an existential threat.

Second, they do not approve of the evisceration of the military power of the United States but they do not want that power used indiscriminately. Obama has done both and, worse, he has done so without producing victory.

Finally, the people sense that the war on terrorism is difficult but not impossible to win, however, they do not perceive that Obama wants to win it nor do they believe that he knows how to win it. They want solutions to a difficult problem such as those that were provided by Ronald Reagan.

They do not want war, they want victory. Obama has given them the first but not the second.

...but it seems to me the big problem people are starting to have with Obama is that he just doesn’t seem to care, at all, about anything.

And you know, I don’t think he does.

My take is more morbid than that. I think he knows the house of cards is coming down no matter what he does, and has been trying to appear to care and be presidential - but it’s gotten to where we are so close and it is all so meaningless that he’s just not giving a good performance as he was.

Yeah. I think it’s that bad and have since before the housing crash. I believe the analogies of the water doubling every day in a sealed stadium or the penny income doubling every day - the exponential growth - and that is what I see happening to the western world’s cultural and financial problems. We are at a precipice and it is happening faster and faster. But the end will be at lightning speed, as in “hope you have enough gas to make it home from work.”

You are onto something big about “caring”. For Obama’s base of emotion voters, “cares about people like me” matters much more than rational policy. This impression was carefully fostered by his campaign handlers (who successfully painted Romney as a cruel plutocrat). But the real Obama is aloof, disengaged, and disinterested. He cares about himself, period, and it shows.

IMO, most Americans do not comprehend world affairs or even geography, or aspire to. They want to believe that smart people in government know better and “work 24/7” to keep everything under control. But endless embarrassments and disasters (Fast & Furious, Benghazi, trading 5 terrorists for a deserter, the immigration fiasco, exposure of NSA spying, gross ObamaCare mismanagement, green energy corruption, Veterans Administration debacles, downed airliners, feckless red-lines in Syria, ISIS triumphant) make it impossible to pretend that this President and his team have ANYTHING under control. That makes even Obama voters uneasy, since disorder portends disruption of “benefits”. And who makes sure you get your benefits? Why, “someone who cares about people like me”, of course.