The following is a leaked transcript of an intervention by Democrats for a politician who is in trouble and cannot help himself.
Dear Mr. President:
Speaking for many who wish you success, we urge you to seek professional counsel concerning a number of serious matters that are causing us and some others concern.
Your approval ratings are down, Democrats in key states have resorted to running against you, and you were recently named the worst president since World War II ended — defeating (if that’s the word) both Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon, with whose names the words “malaise” and “Watergate” are forever entwined. Assuming you find this prospect distasteful, we suggest for a start that some small steps be taken, beginning with the first and perhaps most important: admit that you have been wrong.
You may think “Don’t do stupid stuff” is a really cool slogan, but stupid describes most of your actions since you took your hand off the Bible in 2009. It was stupid to let Vladimir Putin know you don’t care about eastern Europe; stupid to not give early support to Iranian dissidents; stupid to intervene in Libya and then leave the country; stupid to not arm the Syrian rebels back when they had a chance of succeeding; stupid to draw a line in the sand and let Syrian dictator Bashar Assad cross it; stupid to abandon Iraq against the warnings of all your advisors; and stupid to turn a blind eye toward the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria when it still could have been easily handled, long before it had taken two cities Americans died for, and almost dismantled Iraq.
Once you woke up (after a fashion) it wasn’t too bright to call it a crisis and then try to say the world always was “messy,” to suggest it’s a war and then say it isn’t, to vow to use force, and disown the main thing that generals say can make force effective: the presence of boots on the ground. No wonder your generals are slamming you hard and your former colleagues are falling over each other to distance themselves from your former failed policies. Hillary was first, Leon Panetta has joined her, and more will appear in their wake.
One of your problems is an intense revulsion to the words “war,” “ground forces,” “Iraq” “and “Bush,” which has kept you from taking even small measures to start to climb out of your hole. But your aversion to force heretofore has led to a point at which more force will be needed to stop yet more carnage. You have to go back to Iraq now only because you decided to leave it too fast. And all you have done has made George W. Bush look better: People remember he admitted mistakes, bested al Qaeda, and left Iraq stable. People would kill to have that back now.
Mr. President, it pains us to say this, but to regain your lost reputation, you have to channel your inner George Bush — not the Bush of 2004-2006, but the Bush with the bullhorn in lower Manhattan, and the Bush who promoted the Surge. Do it for yourself, if not for your country, for right now you’re on track to rank somewhere south of Buchanan and Hoover, since where they failed to deal with the crises that faced them, you found an international order that was not yet in crisis, and managed to make it much worse. If not of yourself, think of your daughters, who should not go through life in the shadow of failure.
Do it for the children, Mr. President. Your own.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
