It turns out President Obama’s marble playing was a head fake
President Obama’s policy successes are bound to give the Right Wing heartburn especially given all the recent good news. The President has been touting his economic and other policy successes recently. Last quarter’s GDP came in much above expectations, the highest in over a decade.
Does anyone remember the hyperventilation on Right Wing outlets when the President methodically increased pressure on the Russians for their quasi-invasion of Ukraine?
The video above includes the most effective talking points they used about President Obama’s methods. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said the President was playing marbles while Putin was playing chess. Rudy Giuliani and many others in the Right Wing became the mutual admiration Putin society. At the end of the video, the President’s response was short, tight, and effective as it showed their thought process devoid of the ability to think through different degrees of freedom.
Now both the ruble and the Russian economy are in free fall. It turns out patient robust effective foreign policy is much more effective. The President said as much in his CNN interview with Candy Crowley.
“The gist of it is that you are naive,” Candy Crowley said. “and they are rolling you.” The President response was perfectly on point. In a few words he showed those who got it all wrong how diminutive their thinking was.
“So this was said about Mr. Putin for example three or four months ago,” President Obama said. “There was a spade of stories about how he is the chess master outmaneuvering The West and outmaneuvering Mr. Obama and this and that and the other. And right now he is presiding over the collapse of his currency, a major financial crisis, and a huge economic contraction. That doesn’t sound like somebody who has rolled me or the United states of America.
There is this knee-jerk sense I think on the part of some in the foreign party establishment that shooting first and thinking about it second projects strength. I disagree with that. We have been very firm with respect to those countries that we think are violating international law or are acting against our interest.”
In other words, President Obama is inviting his detractors to compare his outcomes to that of Putin or anyone else. The United States under the President is far exceeding every industrialized nation by just about every measure.
It turns out it was Putin playing marbles. The President was playing chess all along. The Right Wing in their infinite willful ignorance proved unable to discern the difference.