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WaPo’s Richard Cohen Rips Obama’s Failure of Leadership: ‘Waved a Droopy Flag’
Legal Insurrection ^ | Mark Finkelstein

Posted on 12/27/2016 6:07:10 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is no conservative, and certainly no fan of Donald Trump. The headline of a column he wrote during the campaign, after all, was “Trump’s Hitlerian disregard for the truth.”

Which makes his column of today, “Thanks to no-drama Obama, American leadership is gone,” which absolutely rips the bark off Barack Obama, all the more remarkable. Observing that Obama “has been all too happy to preside over the loss of American influence,” he describes the current president as having “waved a droopy flag. He did not want to make America great again. It was great enough for him already.” On Syria, Obama “threw in the towel. The banner he flew was one of American diminishment.”

View the video here.

(Excerpt) Read more at legalinsurrection.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; Syria
KEYWORDS: barackobama; leadership; morningjoe; richardcohen
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

He was elected to the Presidency.....twice.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize.

He went to Harvard Law School.

He was called “brilliant” and “visionary”.

He turned out to be an empty bag.


21 posted on 12/27/2016 6:56:08 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: workerbee
They don't worship people, only power.

They did the same with Bill Clinton as he was leaving office, only to "rehabilitate" him (in true Soviet style) as a statesman.
22 posted on 12/27/2016 6:57:38 AM PST by adingdangdoo
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

This will be the 2,597,823rd psychoanalysis of Barack Obama on the internet but from the first moment I became aware of him I noted what a coward he was.

There is the usual talk tough/run and hide dynamic with him but there is an even more fundamental cowardice at work. He, with the help of far too many, has built up an alternative reality bubble that he frantically reinforces every hour of every day. Any intrusions into his fantasy world where he is ALWAYS the smartest, funniest, most capable, most well-read, most consequential person regardless of office or era are met with immediate resentment, anger, and an unquenchable desire to return fire in the most condescending, mendacious manner possible.

To be fair, Trump has a bit of a hair trigger but he has never claimed omniscience or infallibility - he’s usually setting the record straight that the media intentionally get wrong.

I know that Obama seems like the personification of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ but unlike the emperor who became enraged by hearing the truth, Obama continues to pretend that the truth doesn’t even exist. It’s very possible that the lies he tells about prosperity, unemployment, foreign affairs, etc. aren’t viewed as lies by him thanks to an army of toadies. His failure - make that refusal - to read security and intelligence memos is more evidence.

His body language in interviews and press conferences is very revealing. Criticism and tough questions make him lower his head as if he’s considering a bull-like charge at the questioner. It’s also a poker-style ‘tell’ that he’s wrestling with the conflict between fantasy and reality but fantasy remains unefeated and untied in Obamaland.


23 posted on 12/27/2016 7:00:57 AM PST by relictele (Principiis obsta & Finem respice - Resist The Beginnings & Consider The Ends.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

We should all be glad that our involvement in Syria, damaging as it has been, was limited. In that theater, the president’s lack of leadership spared us lives, I’ll will and money. But because he did get involved a bit, we now have Russia and Iran as major players.


24 posted on 12/27/2016 7:16:38 AM PST by lurk (TEat)
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To: relictele

Very interesting analysis.


25 posted on 12/27/2016 7:16:59 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (FReepmail or ping me to be put on my ping list for criticism of liberal media)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
He did not want to make America great again. It was great enough for him already.”

No. Like the rest of the left he thought America as too great and needed to be brought down a peg or two and our enemies needed his assistance to 'resist' American 'imperialism". He has always despised this country and anyone who doesn't see that when surveying the wreckage of his 8 years in office is being willfully blind.

26 posted on 12/27/2016 7:21:02 AM PST by pgkdan (The Silent Majority Stands With TRUMP!)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
Message to Richard Cohen, et al:

If one looks at Obama’s actions through a lense with the presumption that he is a hate America/Muslim, everything he has done and is doing makes clear sense.

27 posted on 12/27/2016 7:23:25 AM PST by AlphaOneAlpha
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

This is what happens when Americans vote with their eyes. Obama’s skin color is what they wanted and (in a practical sense) it’s all they/we got. He was a narcissistic, smart-aleck social justice warrior first and foremost, and a poor excuse for any sort of executive position in today’s world. Unfortunately, he is my President. But, his blatant disregard for the Constitution makes him less an American, and while I will always respect the position of President of the United States, I will despise that socialist for the rest of my life.


28 posted on 12/27/2016 7:25:40 AM PST by BoomerBill (Keep America beautiful - deport a liberal.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

What did Richard Cohen think he was voting for? I don’t understand liberal nitwits who are shocked ... shocked, I tell you! ... that Obama is an anti-American, doctrinaire leftist with Muslim sympathies. It’s what he’s always been; look at his record.


29 posted on 12/27/2016 7:29:57 AM PST by Campion (Halten Sie sich unbedingt an die Lehre!)
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To: BoomerBill

Well said!


30 posted on 12/27/2016 7:34:07 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (FReepmail or ping me to be put on my ping list for criticism of liberal media)
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To: blueunicorn6

Empty chair.


31 posted on 12/27/2016 7:40:41 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

“When does Obama realize he’s been a total failure? “

The moment Trump swears in and the press is no longer afraid of Obama’s retaliatory temper tantrums and starts printing what a failure the idiot is.


32 posted on 12/27/2016 7:42:22 AM PST by CodeToad (If it weren't for physics and law enforcement, I'd be unstoppable!)
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To: originalbuckeye

You know Slugs don’t create any drama either.


33 posted on 12/27/2016 8:12:08 AM PST by skinndogNN
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

As George Will descended into the Keith Oberman circle, the liberal Richard Cohen has emerged, in some cases, as one of the best articulaters of our time.

A few years ago, our favorite ‘journalist’ here, Helen Thomas, said something to the effect that the Jews in Israel should “Go back to where they came from”.

Cohen BLASTED her and talked about something that I suspect virtually none of you guys reading this is aware of (I certainly wasn’t at the time). It was about the massacres of Jews AFTER the conclusion of World War 2, in Poland...where the locals, for whatever reason, blamed the Jews for the war and massacred thousands. It was a fitting tribute to that bitch to call it out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/07/AR2010060702583.html

I have a lot of respect for a man, regardless of their politics, when they will call a spade a spade.


34 posted on 12/27/2016 8:17:35 AM PST by BobL (In Honor of the NeverTrumpers, I declare myself as FR's first 'Imitation NeverTrumper')
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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

Lack of will, when America no longer cares about Israel, or cares more for her enemies.


That’s what happened to the Demoncrap party. They could care less about their own constituents, and prefer to cater to the Muslims - an ideology that want’s to destroy the very jackasses helping them. Makes you want to laugh if it wasn’t so idiotic.


35 posted on 12/27/2016 8:39:32 AM PST by New Jersey Realist (America is the land of the free BECAUSE of the brave)
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To: New Jersey Realist

Spot on, Jersey


36 posted on 12/27/2016 8:57:49 AM PST by AlphaOneAlpha
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Obama failed Mr.Cohen? That’s nonsense

Obama only “failed” in your eyes because you never knew what he was trying to accomplish in the first place Mr. Cohen

Ask Israel about the UN vote last week, Obama didn’t fail he succeeded exactly what he’s been trying to do Mr.Cohen

See Mr Cohen you had no idea what Obama was trying to accomplish which was an ugly surprise to you

Just like you have no idea what Trump intends to accomplish and will accomplish which will be a pleasant surprise to you


37 posted on 12/27/2016 9:00:40 AM PST by tophat9000 (Tophat9000)
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To: Mears

bfl


38 posted on 12/27/2016 9:01:16 AM PST by Mears
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To: AlphaOneAlpha
Like the rest of the left he thought America as too great and needed to be brought down a peg or two and our enemies needed his assistance to 'resist' American 'imperialism".

I don't think that can be emphasized enough when attempting to write a post-mortem for this lamentable chapter in American history. This was campus progressivism's Big Chance and they weren't shy about proclaiming its "transformative" nature. To be sure, "We are the ones we've been waiting for" was a grotesquely narcissistic utterance but 0bama and his followers meant it seriously.

That meant that the principal focus was to be domestic, because that is the transformation they've been designing for the better part of a half century. It led them down the paths of intense and trendy racism, anti-middle-class economic warfare, graft, corruption, and authoritarianism that they loudly opposed until in power and in a position to benefit from that power. It also meant that foreign policy would be a mirror image whether it were appropriate or not. 0bama kowtowing to every foreign leader he found in front of a camera was a perfect illustration of what he felt the country's foreign policy should be, and when, at last, he desired to leave his own personal imprint on history he found that the kowtowing had a cost. Syria only infuriates him because his royal will was flouted, not because he or anyone in his administration gives a rip for the Syrians.

But his foreign policy has, in fact, left an imprint if not the one he wanted. The Arab Spring debacle of 2011 was a systematic repudiation of stability in the Middle East in favor of Transformation, and the new Islamic face of Europe is only one of the results. It isn't a pretty picture, and it wasn't painted accidentally.

To understand the 0bama administrations and to a great degree the Western Left in power, you have first to understand their hatred, their greed, and their contempt for the greatness that placed them in the position to destroy it. To them, "America was never great" because of their own failure to understand it. And evidently it turned out to be quite great enough to send them into a shrieking tantrum at having the controls plucked from their hands by an angry people. Too bad.

39 posted on 12/27/2016 9:18:37 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Maybe it is slooooowly sinking in that Obama has greatly diminished the dimwit’s power and influence. Even more than Rush Limbaugh or Fox News (in their minds).
Obama may have to fear a crazed leftist more than Trump.


40 posted on 12/27/2016 9:37:38 AM PST by Leep (Stronger without her!)
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