The Commander in Chief

Obama’s achievement is huge and is something to take pride in — but this does not at all guarantee his re-election in 2012.

It was said about George W. Bush that he had been elected twice: the first in the controversial elections of November 2000 and the second, crucially, on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. Then Bush became president. Barack Obama was elected with a huge majority in 2008, but it’s certainly possible — although it’s too early to assess — that his presidency became complete and orderly only when he gave the directive to search for, allocated resources to locate and issued the order to kill Osama bin Laden.

The comparison is fragmentary and disputable, but a similarity exists. Obama was the one to take off the head of the monster hissing fire and spitting poison and death on Bush’s America. Obama has achieved the closure of 9/11 because he persevered.

Obama is not a romantic, not an idealist, not an interfering liberal or an introverted conservative and not an ideologist. Obama is a realist. As such, he knows that Sunday, there occurred a huge thing, but it may be that in actual fact not a thing really happened.

Article 2, Section 2, Paragraph 2.1 of the U.S. Constitution states most clearly and sharply that the United States president shall be “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” Out of all of the president’s constitutional and executive powers, the supreme command of the armed forces is considered the most important and significant one.

Many presidents were elected in spite of and in light of criticism and concerns about their lack of experience in the field of national security, lack of erudition in building power, power structure, operating power, the technology and political management of the armed forces — and in addition, the absence of sophisticated and deep understanding of international diplomacy that would harm their presidency and weaken the U.S. position.

Reasoning is more important than experience

This was the critique of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The 44th president got elected after a partial tenure of only two years in the Senate, which came after not-so-impressive terms in the House of Representatives of the state of Illinois.

In the primary campaign within the Democratic Party at the beginning of 2008, candidate Hillary Clinton’s election advertisement asked with cruel simplicity: “It is 3 o’clock in the morning. The special phone in the Oval Office of the White House is ringing. There is an emergency and the phone is still ringing... but who will answer it?”

In response to these arguments, Obama asserted that reasoning is more important than experience. See the management of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 by Kennedy, a young president who was not a very prominent senator prior to that. Moreover, said Obama, if you take the most impressive resumes, the most accumulated experience and the greatest literacy in national security and foreign policy matters, what will you get?

Looking closely at the ‘60s, you’ll get “the best and the brightest” of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, who drew the U.S. into the terminal swamp called Vietnam. Taking a look at Bush administration, you get Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Obama made this point in mid-2008, at the moment when the dimensions of the mess in Iraq peaked in terms of American losses and the feeling of purposelessness of the unclear war in Iraq.

Revealed Daring and Political Wisdom

Obama established his standing as the commander in chief, reinforced his image as a decisive and resolute leader and solidified the most vulnerable aspect of his presidency in foreign policy. The repercussions of eliminating bin Laden on foreign policy are great: on the complex and possibly undermined relations with Pakistan, the continuing presence in Afghanistan, the policy of reaching out to the Muslim world, the policy toward collisions in the Arab world and the status and general perception of the U.S. in the world, and its reflection on many other subject matters.

Obama of the post-bin Laden liquidation period is a more experienced and more confident Obama that will handle all of the above. Obama the candidate presented a different program concerning the need to focus on the war on terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of Iraq; since January 2009, as president, he started to divert resources, forces and political attention paid from Iraq to Afghanistan.

The assumption was made that his lack of experience was reflected blatantly, and there were generals who could not help criticizing him. But Obama insisted and built a versatile national security team, showed determination, a faculty for decision making and daring political wisdom.

The temptation to attribute some political implications to Obama’s success in taking out bin Laden in the approaching 2012 elections is a vain fancy, unnecessary and worthless. Obama knows that there is no one among 310 million Americans who would vote for him in 2012 out of a recognition of his role in the elimination of bin Laden.

There is no more perishable merchandise that cannot be stockpiled and stored as political capital and political popularity. The pace of events, the impact of multiple variables and the lack of patience and tolerance of the modern citizen are such that in a month, Osama bin Laden will be a vague memory — or alternatively, a man who, from his gravesite in the depths of the sea, launched a terror attack in revenge on the U.S.

Obama Will Wait and Lessen Preoccupation with bin Laden

The elections will be held in a year and a half in November. What will decide their results will be the performance of the U.S. economy in the summer of 2012. Americans will come forth from the months of July, August and September 2012 and look at unemployment, erosion of the salaries, their confidence in the economy as consumers, their savings level, the credit level, real estate prices and fuel prices.

The same 30 independents who granted victory to Obama in 2008 will determine whether he passes to a second term. Another variable that will likely decide the fate of the elections is the identity and quality of the Republican candidate for presidency. As long as the Republicans are having fun with Donald Trump or Sarah Palin, Obama may get elected even if they prove that he was born in Ness Ziona and not in Hawaii.

But with a serious Republican candidate (for example, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty) in combination with an economic crisis, an additional recession and a considerable increase in unemployment, Obama’s campaign is in trouble. Obama’s operation in the termination of bin Laden will be a part of Obama’s heritage and a successful Hollywood blockbuster, but it has no connection to the elections, where he might lose.

In Obama’s presidency, just as there are evident tokens of a second term around the corner, there are features of a “one-term presidency” as well. Therefore, Obama will wait and decrease dealing with bin Laden. The achievement is his anyway, but the elections he’s learning from are elections of 1992: George Bush the father, the conqueror of Saddam Hussein and winner of the Gulf War, looked invincible in early 1992.

Then the Soviet Union fell apart, the U.S. became the only hegemonic superpower, Iraq was run over and China and India began an experiment called capitalism. Who’s going to overcome Bush? An anonymous governor of Arkansas named Bill Clinton who wrote on his headquarter walls a simple and catchy slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The accomplishment of the U.S. and Obama is huge and is something to take pride in. The political advantages embodied in positioning of the president as a successful commander in chief are numerous and promising. To assume that America will go to the elections in 2012 for this is already exaggerated and far-fetched.