Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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That 3 A.M. Phone Call

Rich Galen

Monday September 21, 2009

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Remember that political commercial by the Hillary Clinton campaign last year? The "It's 3 A.M." ad? This was the audio:

It's 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing.
Something's happening in the world.
Your vote will decide who answers that call: Whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military; someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.
It's 3 AM and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?

That ad ran in the run-up to the March 4th primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas. Hillary won all the primaries, but not by enough to catch Obama.

As we've discussed here before, there was a deal between Obama and H. R. Clinton that if Clinton would not cause problems at the Democratic National Convention, then Hillary would be nominated for Secretary of State.

Hillary took the deal. She doesn't get to answer the phone in the White House at 3 A.M. but she gets to answer the phone at 3 A.M. when she's in the Congo, or Kenya.

You may remember that Hillary has replaced Joe Biden as the senior member of the Obama Administration most likely to say something stupid. She bit some kid's head off at a meeting with students because he mistakenly said "President Clinton" instead of "President Obama" and she snapped, "I'm not going to sit here and channel Bill Clinton." Yikes!

On that same trip she implied that the election of 2000 was stolen by the GOP with the recount in Florida even though it was later proven by major news organizations that the decision was the correct one.

All that as introduction to a front pager in the Washington Post yesterday which was headlined:

Obama's Worldwide Star Power Finds Limits: Skepticism Abroad Echoes Doubt at Home

Although writers Michael D. Shear and Howard Schneider buried the lead, they got to it in the third graf:

[J]ust as his domestic honeymoon has clearly ended, international events have demonstrated the limits of Obama's personal charm.

On the domestic front, the four polls release over the past five days show Obama's job approval has fallen to an average of 51.75 percent on the heels of what appears to be the collapse of a health insurance reform plan in the U.S. Senate, and the whole ACORN business which has splashed up all over Obama.

As the President prepares to address the U.N. on Wednesday, the Post points out - this is their list, not mine:

NATO allies have refused to send new troops to Afghanistan.
Few countries have agreed to accept detainees held at Guantanamo.
Scottish officials ignored Obama's plea to keep the Lockerbie bomber in prison.
U.S. efforts to head off a coup in Honduras were ineffective.
North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran may be making nukes, too.
Middle East leaders have rebuffed Obama's efforts at peacemaking.

Quite a list. And Obama's only been at this for eight months. Imagine how many international problems he and Hillary can exacerbate in four full years.

To make matters worse, people involved in the defense and intelligence business in Washington were abuzz yesterday on the rumor that someone had leaked the report and recommendations (assumedly for more troops) by the commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to Washington Post �ber-investigative reporter, Bob Woodward.

If that is true, and if the Post runs with the story, that will overwhelm whatever Obama has planned for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, or the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh this week.

Foreign policy bedevils every Administration. Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon had Vietnam. Ford had Korea. Carter had Iran. Reagan had the Contras. Bush 41 had the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. Clinton had the Embassy bombings. Bush 43 had Afghanistan and Iraq; and Obama has the 137 issues listed above.

Rarely, though, has an American President swaggered across the world stage in the first months of his Administration with so much hubris and so little to back it up. The world, not impressed, appears to be heading to the lobby for some coffee and a smoke.

It's 3 AM � Who do you want answering the phone?
Your vote will decide who answers that call.

My vote? Let it go to voice mail.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the 3 A.M ad on YouTube, and to that Washington Post story. Also a Mullfoto of a mini-flood in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia the other day and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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