Lucky shot

President Obama was wonderful in his interview with 60 Minutes last night: calm and resolute; neither humble nor arrogant; just, well, presidential. And then, the next morning, he signed the legislation ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” another campaign promise he made.

Just another day at the office for this extraordinary president.

If you missed the interview, I highly recommend a viewing. A story and the full interview are available here (copy and paste into your browser):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/no-evidence-pakistan-knew-of-bin-ladens-hideout-top-security-official-says/2011/05/08/AFxXpNSG_story.html

So now Obama enjoys what I predict will be a growing bump in his approval ratings as a result of killing bin Laden. Gas prices are dropping and are predicted to be down by fifty cents a gallon by summer; job creation in the private sector continues to rise. Maybe killing Osama isn’t the end of al-Qaeda, and some encouraging economic news isn’t the end of the recession for most Americans, but things certainly look a lot brighter today than they did a week ago.

It’s still over a year to the 2012 election, but I have to believe that Republicans are growing increasingly nervous. The best they can come up with for now is a little sniping from the sidelines. First, they criticize Obama for making too many references to himself in announcing the death of Osama. Eight in nine minutes by my count, including some real whoppers such as, “Tonight, I can report. . . .” which could have been better phrased in the passive, “Tonight, it can be reported”; or “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation,” which might have be phrased as, “Today, that tall black guy in the White House launched a targeted operation. . . .”

But I don’t think this kind of petty denigration is going to play well anywhere but on the Rush Limbaugh show. Even worse for the Ree-Pubs, senior Bush administration officials are stepping out of the shadows to take at least partial credit for the kill and criticize Obama for stopping “enhanced interrogation techniques,” also referred to as torture except in the Bush administration. Rummy Rumsfeld said that early tips obtained through waterboarding led to Osama’s bloody end. "Trigger" Dick Cheney said the same and suggested that Obama has put the United States at risk by reaffirming our commitment to national and international law regarding torture.

And Cheney wanted to take the head shot since he has the experience, but that's another matter.

All this from the administration that, after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, got absolutely everything else wrong for the next seven years. I won’t go on about it here. For a partial list of absolutely everything else the Bush administration got wrong for the next seven years, email me privately.

Actually, I’m surprised that no one I’m aware of is making the argument that Obama acted recklessly, despite his fortunate outcome. He gambled his presidency and to a large degree the standing of the United States in the world on intelligence that he described as circumstantial and on an operation that had what he described as a 55/45 chance of success. He said he worried that the Navy SEALs would find only a “prince from Dubai” instead of the terrorist leader responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been some significant consequences.”

No shit. So it’s no wonder White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan described the decision rather ungrammatically as “what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory." The outcome, one way or the other, fairly or unfairly, would largely define how history would see Obama the man and probably his entire presidency.

The tall black guy in the White House rolled the dice and won. I’m betting that not the least important thing he won is his reelection.

Lucky shot.