Where's an Open Mic When We Really Need It?

[Valin]

WSJ:

Obama was admitting his distrust of his fellow Americans to a leader of a nasty government that seeks to thwart our purposes.

MARTIN PERETZ

3/29/12

 

When President Obama blurted out to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he couldn't do serious business during an election year, the New York Times characterized it as a "moment of political candor." It seems to me, actually, to be a moment of political contempt—for the issues at hand as well as for the demos itself. Mr. Medvedev meanwhile was in familiar territory: Dissembling is the routine of the elected Russian dictatorship.

 

We are the big boys, Mr. Obama seemed to be telling Mr. Medvedev— or rather Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and I are, and you, Medvedev, are the messenger, to whom, as the newspaper photograph shows, I confide. "I will deliver this information to Vladimir," responded the second man in the Kremlin. Another news picture shows an image from the back, the two presidents walking together, the American chief executive with his big right hand firmly on his Russian junior partner's much slighter shoulder

 

(Snip)

 

Additional "give" to Moscow on the nuclear issue was not something he admitted to the relevant senators that he was contemplating when they were weighing and approving the New Start Treaty a bare year ago. Yet it is a matter of deep interest to the Kremlin which, without any moral credit and without much material credit either, seems to be charting the cartography of another Cold War. (Remember, it pursued the last one from an impoverished base.) Mr. Obama's pliancy on the matter will encourage them to think that we are, in this matter, a patsy.

 

(Snip)