The Case For Obama

Conrad Black writing at NRO.

"I am grateful to Michael Kinsley for presenting in The New York Review of Books two weeks ago the argument for reelecting Obama, since I was unable to think of one myself: “health care reform, tough new financial protection for consumers,” guiding “the economy through its roughest period in eighty years with moderate success (who could have done better?),” ending “our long war in Iraq,” and avenging “the worst insult to our sovereignty since Pearl Harbor.” Obama is, said Kinsley, “a president who faced an opposition of really spectacular intransigence and downright meanness.”

So this is the argument: a catastrophe in health care, a lot of intrusive window dressing for consumers, $5 trillion of deficits to hold the increase in unemployment to about 5 million, a lengthy and pre-planned departure from Iraq that many (not including myself) see as a scuttle, and the admitted tedium of dealing with the congressional Republicans after the bracing depelosification of the midterm elections. The only element of it that isn’t simply rubbish is killing bin Laden, for which the president certainly deserves credit."