With a decisiveness that was sadly lacking in his foreign policy, former President Barack Obama has jumped into the 2020 election race. Unfortunately, this leap isn’t in the nation’s better interest.
Obama presents his interjection differently. Responding to the Justice Department’s decision to drop charges against Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Obama used a Joe Biden campaign call last week to argue that the “rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.” On the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, Obama added, “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster …”
So, yes, Obama is firmly in the 2020 race. And not for President Trump.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why Obama is so keen to play a role in unseating Trump. Not only has the president undermined many of Obama’s legacy policy interests, but he has previously questioned Obama’s very citizenship. Of course, Trump would say that Obama’s Russia investigation focus helped to undermine his presidency from the very start.
But here’s the thing. As much as he might believe otherwise, Obama is not putting the nation first here. One of Trump’s rotating enemies, former President George W. Bush, explains why. Bush spent the entirety of the Obama presidency showing how to put the nation first even where doing so pained Bush’s deeply held beliefs. Consider Obama’s effect on Bush’s most defining legacy issue, the situation in Iraq.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original 2003 invasion, on entering office in January 2009, Bush had given Obama a stable situation in Iraq. The 2007-2009 “surge” of forces and support had gutted al Qaeda in Iraq, mitigated Iran’s sectarian influence in Baghdad, and reduced violence significantly. U.S. military deaths in November 2008 through January 2009 were less than 20 per month — a far cry from the hundreds of monthly casualties being suffered in the darkest days of 2007 and 2008.
The facts didn’t matter. Obama was determined to pull U.S. forces out precipitously, and he didn’t care about the consequences.
Did Bush always believe that Obama’s rush to withdraw from Iraq was a mistake? Yes, and a grave mistake at that. But even as Obama’s policy proceeded against the best government advice, against the evidence on the ground, and enabled the rise of ISIS, just as Bush had predicted (click the center of the video below), the 43rd president stayed silent.
Why the silence?
Because against what must have been very deeply personal and patriotic anguish, Bush knew that the best way to show patriotic leadership would be to give his successor the space to lead with his mandate from the people. He knew that American institutions are upheld by conduct, as well as the Constitution, and that the partisan wildfires are best fueled by those who lack a sense of history and a perspective of the long term.
But if Bush could stay quiet when Obama was literally unleashing Bush’s worse nightmare, why can’t Obama remain silent when Trump’s Justice Department gives Flynn a pass in a far less serious way than Obama did for Gen. David Petraeus?
Who knows. It’s sad and certainly not in America’s interest, regardless.
