I have another diary on the Rec List right now on the apprehension of Osama bin Laden, but something just occurred to me in reading over the comments that does not quite fit there, so I'm making it a separate diary. I think that it's a point that has been lost, because -- not for the first time -- Obama has made his job look too easy, so easy that he doesn't get credit for what he's done.
I just did a Google search on a phrase that one would expect to see at a time like this, but that has not appeared within the past 24 hours: "staked his Presidency."
Why does Obama deserve credit for this when, from descriptions of it, he attended a few meetings and gave a go-ahead? He didn't even have to sweat about it, right?
Consider: this operation could have failed.
Consider: we almost lost the Obama Presidency yesterday. If the second helicopter had also failed, perhaps we have a crash, perhaps we have Navy SEALs as hostages. A thousand things could have gone wrong. They didn't. That's partially due to careful planning; it's partially because Obama "went all in."
We all assume that Obama is our 2012 nominee. (He does too.) And yet: had there been a disaster yesterday, as with Jimmy Carter's equally brave decision to try to rescue the Iranian hostages in 1980, then we could truly have seen an injury to his Presidency that the Republicans would have tried their damnedest to make sure ruined his Presidency -- possibly, in the worst case, enough to keep him from even running.
That's what he gambled on yesterday. He staked his Presidency on this. And he won.
Seems a little less passive when you think of it as a profile in political courage, doesn't it? Would G.W. Bush have ever done something this politically brave?
So yeah, share the credit. Bush said we're going to get him, then he said he didn't much care -- and he got re-elected anyway. If the Presidency were a bowling alley, Bush's would have been the one for kids with those cushions in the gutters to keep the ball in the alley.
Obama knew that his political future was on the line in Abbottabad. And he went ahead and did what was right -- even with Republicans ready to pounce on any failure, as with Clinton's order in Somalia leading to "Black Hawk Down."
Obviously, I haven't watched all of the news since then, but in what I've heard and read I have not even seen this realization.
Mr. President, please -- don't make it look this easy! Someone, some Senator, remind people how large of a bet he had calmly placed, that he had staked his Presidency on an outcome he could not control. That, even more than the happy result, is why this is a moment of greatness.Updated by Seneca Doane at Mon May 02, 2011 at 09:24 AM PDT
Kitty has some information you should know about the question: "why didn't they just bomb the compound?"
Updated by Seneca Doane at Mon May 02, 2011 at 11:14 AM PDT
A huge h/t to danvshea below. I don't see how to embed this, so I'll just say: in the name of all that is holy click the link.
Updated by Seneca Doane at Mon May 02, 2011 at 02:20 PM PDT
califlander points out an addition reason that Obama's patient strategy was so brave.