President Obama’s legacy-enhancing trip to Vietnam and Hiroshima helped to push him through the Trump-Sanders-Clinton news focus and back on the front pages, but our weekly White House report card graders John Zogby and Jed Babbin differed on the impact of the trip.
John Zogby
I am sorry, but he did not apologize. President Obama made his tour through Asia and admitted that the United States made “some mistakes” in Vietnam. He then announced that the U.S. would provide arms shipments to Hanoi as a regional friend.
He went on to Japan where the United States was skewered for another brutal rape and murder case against another GI — something that enraged and embarrassed our president. Mr. Obama seethed and, of course, showed restraint. Should he have grabbed Prime Minister Abe and ringed his neck in a sign of American force?
The president did indeed hug a victim of Hiroshima. That is how old wounds can be healed. But he did not apologize. He was just presidential.
Grade B+
Jed Babbin
President Obama spent the week in Vietnam and Japan. His first accomplishment was choosing his route to Vietnam which skirted parts of the South China Sea newly accreted by China. Last week China demanded we cease reconnaissance flights over those areas and Obama complied gladly with China’s order. In Vietnam, Obama’s main accomplishment was his dinner in Hanoi with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.
As the first president to visit Hiroshima, many feared Obama would apologize for America’s use of atomic bombs to end WW2, but he didn’t. Instead, he seemingly apologized for America’s Christianity, saying, “How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.” He added, “Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers that have claimed their faith has a license to kill.”
And the administration’s all-star team was at play this week. Veterans’ Affairs Department chief Bob McDonald distinguished himself by comparing the importance of waiting times for VA medical care to wait times in lines at Disney. He should be next in line for impeachment, behind IRS boss John Koskinen, who was too busy to attend the first House committee hearing on his impeachment.
Grade D-
John Zogby is the senior analyst for Zogby Analytics and author of “We Are Many, We Are One.” Follow him at @TheJohnZogby
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him @jedbabbin
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
