Obama the Fabulist

American Thinker ^ | May 10, 2016 | Jonathan F. Keiler

[Kaslin]

A number of people at AT and elsewhere have written about the New York Times’ fascinating but also deeply disturbing story of how Ben Rhodes, a callow, unsuccessful but well-connected short-story writer became the Obama administration’s primary foreign policy mandarin. This should come as no surprise to careful observers of this administration. Rhodes, according to the Times piece, is Obama’s foreign policy “guru” a man who has a “mind meld” with the president. What Rhodes and the president share though, is not so much a leftist approach to foreign affairs -- though presumably that plays a role -- but rather a talent for creating foreign policy fables that flatter Obama and his coterie, and can be passed off to lapdog media types as “successes.” In this, Rhodes is just one more piece of the fictional story that is Barack Hussein Obama, the country and the world his stage, and the rest of us merely players -- if that.

For those that don’t want to bother to read the long and mostly flattering article, Rhodes’ path to foreign affairs stardom came while working for an MFA (at NYU), at which time he had little knowledge of foreign policy or even an interest in it. According to the Times, he had an epiphany after the 9/11 attacks and through his well-connected family (his mother was close friends with the publisher of Foreign Policy magazine) ended up as a staffer for former Congressman Lee Hamilton, a notorious critic of Israel, a topic about which he and Obama also appear simpatico. Rhodes’ older brother David currently is president of CBS News, though is it fair to assume that in that case, the younger brother’s connections to the White House greased the skids of the elder’s rise.

[Talisker]

Rhodes’ path to foreign affairs stardom came while working for an MFA (at NYU), at which time he had little knowledge of foreign policy or even an interest in it. According to the Times, he had an epiphany after the 9/11 attacks and through his well-connected family (his mother was close friends with the publisher of Foreign Policy magazine) ended up as a staffer for former Congressman Lee Hamilton, a notorious critic of Israel, a topic about which he and Obama also appear simpatico. Rhodes’ older brother David currently is president of CBS News, though is it fair to assume that in that case, the younger brother’s connections to the White House greased the skids of the elder’s rise.

Everything that's wrong with DC, all in one guy.

[litehaus]

Obama the Fabulist

Obama the Fabullshiter????

[old curmudgeon]

I can not understand why everyone does not understand how dangerous obummer is to our country and to our lives as individuals.

Here we have a man who is a fake, a serial, if not pathological, liar who surrounds himself with people like Rhodes....and a congress that takes the position that there is nothing they can do about it and it is not all that important anyway.

When there are a few billion Muslims who would kill all of us at the first opportunity, Putin and the Chinese on the move, and we and the congress get our “facts” from the likes of obummer.

We will go the way of the Roman Empire if we do not wake up and do something about it.

The enemies are not at the gates, they are in our gates.

[Kaslin]

You got it.

[headstamp 2]

Absolutely.

And the idiots inside the beltway are worried about Trump.

[Tallguy]

Tin foil alert.

George H W Bush... former Director CIA.
Bill Clinton... somehow skates on Mena, AR drug running after attending Oxford and cavorting with known communists while in Europe..
George W. Bush... son of #1.
Barak Obama... mother & grandparents cavort with known communists during the Cold War with no visible impact on their careers, and Baby Barak becomes president.

I think I see a pattern here.

[Elsie]

[Elsie]

a man who has a “mind meld” with the president.