By: Matthew K. Burke
Pollster and
political consultant Frank Luntz, famous for his televised focus groups in
which voters use dials to voice their approval or disapproval of political
speak, sounded off on Obama’s final days in office, days that are traditionally
used to provide a smooth transition of power to the next presidential
administration but instead are being used, in Luntz’s view, as a final f*ck you
to America by Obama to “settle scores.”
Appearing on Your
World with Neal Cavuto‘s guest host Trish Regan, Frank Luntz pointed out
some of the more contentious transitions over the past century, like Herbert
Hoover to FDR and Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan but the way Obama has been
leaving office, comparing it to President-elect Donald Trump’s “thank you
tour,” is more like an “f-you tour.”
“The
key point here is that this is not really about making it difficult on Donald
Trump. If Trump did this great tour of the country and they called it a
‘victory tour’ or a ‘thank you tour,’ Obama seems to be doing a — um, I’ve been
trying to figure out the right language so I don’t get fined by the FCC — an
f-you tour. I guess that’s the best way to put it.”
Luntz opined that
Obama’s using his final days in office to “settle scores,” using his shameful treatment of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu as a
prime example, and called out Obama’s going out performance as “not
presidential.”
Luntz said that he
would have expected more from Obama, who he complimented as a “great
communicator.”
By F.H. Buckley
It’s easy to come up
with several different reasons for the Obama administration’s moves against
Russia and Israel.
The repudiation of
his policies in last month’s election would have wounded a normal person’s ego,
to say nothing of someone as vain as Obama. To rub it in, the press has left
the setting to follow the rising sun, reporting so much about Trump that Obama
had seemed quite forgotten.
The extraordinary
burst of diplomatic activity over the last week, so unusual for a departing
president, might therefore seem a piece of Obama’s petulant claim that he could
have defeated Trump had he been able to run for a third term. It reminds one of
the party Bill Clinton threw for himself after leaving office on George W.
Bush’s Inauguration Day, in order to upstage the new president. When they leave
office, recent Democratic presidents find it difficult to withdraw into a
customary, dignified obscurity.
But there’s more to
it than that. What is behind Obama’s attack on Russia and Israel is a pathetic
attempt to tie the hands of the new administration and to extend his rule
beyond the two terms allotted a president.
It’s no secret that
Trump seeks an accommodation with Russia and desires an end to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that he’d pursue this in a very different
manner from Obama and former Secretary Hillary Clinton.
By demonizing Russia,
and withdrawing our historic support for Israel, Obama sought to place an
insurmountable barrier to Trump’s two major foreign-policy initiatives, even as
the flurry of enormously costly new regulations is meant to tie the hands of
Trump’s domestic-policy advisers.
We have expelled 35
Russian diplomats as retaliation for that country’s attempt to influence our
election. Given the ways in which Obama and the Democrats have sought to
influence foreign referenda and elections, in Britain and Israel, that’s a bit
rich.
More to the point, I
haven’t seen any reports that the Russians did influence our election. We’re
supposed to believe that the WikiLeaks transcripts came from Russia, even
though Julian Assange has denied this. At most we seem to be talking about a
phishing attack on John Podesta’s e-mails, which revealed that he didn’t think
much of Catholic converts. Big deal. Most cradle Catholics have felt that way
from time to time.
As for Israel, the
recent Security Council resolution, on which the United States abstained after
covertly encouraging it, is what one might have expected, given Obama’s poor treatment
of our only democratic ally in the Middle East. Foreign-policy idiots will tell
you that that’s all right, since Obama was merely picking a childish spat with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It’s easy to infer,
therefore, that Obama would’ve been happy to stick it to Netanyahu, a man he so
clearly despises. But then, American presidents aren’t supposed to do such
things, with the door swinging behind them on the way out. And so we may
conclude that Obama’s real target was Trump, not Netanyahu. America has voted
for a new president, with a new foreign policy, and Obama proposes to undo
this.
The question is, will
he succeed in tying Trump’s hands? I doubt it. With Russia, any new sanctions
would simply strengthen Trump’s bargaining leverage, as it gives him more cards
to trade away. Remember that what Putin seeks is legitimacy, the recognition
that he is accepted as the head of state and government of a world power.
He is that, every
inch of that, but the recognition that this is so matters greatly to him, and
such recognition is something only America can grant. It’s not something to be
lightly traded away, and the Trump administration will not grant it without
exacting something in return.
I am assuming, of
course, that the media’s over-the-top Russo phobia, the wag-the-dog hysteria,
will be quickly eclipsed by the new administration’s foreign-policy démarches.
Until then, don’t let anyone persuade you to burn your copy of “War and Peace.”
And what of Israel?
On the campaign trail, conservatives often pledge to move the embassy to
Jerusalem. Obama just guaranteed that, this time, it’s going to happen. You can
also expect payback against those countries that use the UN resolution as an
excuse to change their policies toward Israel.
As for the United
Nations itself, let’s not take it too seriously. The grand decisions about
world peace aren’t made by bodies in which Venezuela counts equally with the
United States, but by world powers, and it is only world powers such as the
United States and Russia that hold the key to the resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Which, of course, will suggest to the Russians a
way to signal an opening to the new administration, by blocking any further
attempt by Obama to harm Israel.
F.H. Buckley is a professor
at Scalia Law School. His most recent book was “The Way Back: Restoring the
Promise of America.”
