Obama’s Humiliation Tour

Over the weekend, I saw some 20-year-old hipster kids buying actual records at Barnes and Noble. (For younger readers, a record is like a gigantic CD but with inferior sound quality). I watched these bearded, skinny-jeans-wearing, future denizens of their parents’ basements flip through the records, and I wondered, is there a word that means feeling nostalgic for something you never experienced? There should be. I’d have used it to describe these two kids, who were born in the age of free AOL CDs and grew up with mp3s but apparently miss the music-listening experience of the early ’80s.

I wonder what else they miss from before they were born. Garbage Pail Kids? Card catalogs? Those huge gray cellphones? Or maybe something substantive. How about a president with a sound foreign policy?

When it comes to foreign policy, President Obama is always ready to trade the American cow for some magic beans.

President Obama, the Energizer bunny of international humiliation, kept going and going this week. China declined to offer him the fine red carpet stairway they typically offer to foreign heads of state upon arrival, and President Duterte of the Phillipines called him “putang ina,” which means “son of a b***h.” The president of the United States is officially being trolled by foreign heads of state because jamming a finger in the eye of the U.S. is so in vogue. This is what happens when you project weakness on the world stage.

Obama’s foreign policy strategy, lead-from-behindism, invites this sort of disrespect. It’s fundamentally flawed in that leading, by definition, cannot be done from behind. Leading from behind is like grilling some burgers in the oven while getting wasted on non-alcoholic beer. But progressivism is an ideology built upon forcing square words into round definitions, so why should the foreign policy connected to progressivism be any different? Progressivism has redefined leading as following.

The treatment Obama received from foreign leaders this week is nothing new. Earlier this year, Raul Castro dissed Obama by not showing up to greet him at the airport, and King Salman dissed him when he visited Saudi Arabia.

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As far as I can tell, leading-from-behind-ism seems to involve three guiding principles:

1) Always Say You’re Sorry (Psst! Your American history is showing)
The Obama administration called it “reckoning with history,” but anyone who listens to the speeches knows that Obama has spent his entire presidency on an apology tour. Most recently, he apologized for U.S. bombings during Laos’ civil war.

If Obama jetted down to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto, history tells us he would bow to Peña Nieto, apologize for America’s Alpha-nation attitude, and beg for friendship. It’s like a kid who thinks the bully will leave him alone if he gives the bully an extra five bucks on top of his lunch money.

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President Obama states his foreign policy goal as a desire to build relationships based on “mutual respect,” but every trip he goes on, respect seems to be driving away from him down a one-way street. Because how do you respect the leader who always seems embarrassed of his country?

2) Give them what they want while asking for nothing in return (Magic Bean Economics)
Trading five Gitmo terrorists for the release of Bowe Bergdahl is the archetypal Obama foreign policy move. When it comes to domestic policy, he won’t give Republicans an inch. Remember when McCain thought he was going to negotiate on health care with Obama, and Obama dropped that “The election is over” sledgehammer on him? The implication, of course, being that there would be no negotiations.

But not so when it comes to foreign policy, an area where President Obama is always ready to trade the American cow for some magic beans. Consider the Iran deal — Iran gets billions of dollars to stop their nuclear program, but if inspectors want to verify, Iran has to be notified of inspections nearly a month in advance.

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Just last year, the Obama administration spent half a billion bucks to train, according to Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, “four or five” anti-ISIS Syrian rebels.

President Obama opens foreign policy negotiations by pushing everything he has across the table.

3) Always show your cards to whoever will look (I hope they don’t get CNN in the Middle East)
The telegrapher. In football, he’s the quarterback who stares down the receiver he’s going to throw to. In poker, it’s the guy who looks at his cards and says, “Oh, no!” In foreign policy, it’s the guy who announces when the troops will be leaving.

But Obama’s biggest telegraph was when he drew a red line with Syria. Assad crossed Obama’s line, so he drew a new one. He tried to push the decision off on Congress, saying, “I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress.” It was somewhat lacking in authenticity, given Obama’s propensity for not giving a damn what Congress thinks. When it comes to gun control, illegal immigration, health care — Obama has shown an emotional range from disinterest to disdain in what the people’s representatives in Congress think.

So what did this telegraph? The fact that Obama will threaten without any follow-through. It exposed that his tough words as being no more than tough words.