Jacob Heilbrunn praises Obama’s reaction to the Iranian election crisis:
Clearly Obama was caught flatfooted by the protests. But he does seem to be carefully ratcheting up his criticisms of the mullahs. In a Tuesday interview with CNBC, Obama said that when, “you’ve got 100,000 people who are out on the streets peacefully protesting, and they’re having to be scattered through violence and gunshots, what that tells me is the Iranian people are not convinced of the legitimacy of the election. And my hope is that the regime respond not with violence, but with a recognition that the universal principles of peaceful expression and democracy are ones that should be affirmed.”
….The truth is that the impressive thing has been how well Obama has handled the crisis….Obama’s basic approach has been to follow the foreign policy equivalent of the
Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” Imagine the obloquy that would greet Obama if he were to champion the demonstrators and help to create a bloodbath, as Radio Free Europe did during the 1956 Hungarian revolution, when it encouraged Hungarians to revolt by assuring them that they had backing of the West, which they didn’t. So far, Obama has shrewdly hewed to a middle course that allows him some flexibility in dealing with Iran.
This, of course, is Obama’s basic modus operandi for everything. He doesn’t feel like he has to react immediately to every provocation. When he does, his responses are usually measured and sober. He looks for middle ground. He’s willing to wait for the right time to push the boundaries a little further in the direction of his choosing.
This is sometimes intensely frustrating. The gay community, for example, is up in arms over his lack of action on issues like DOMA and DADT. But there shouldn’t be any surprise about that. It was obvious throughout the entire campaign season that this is how he works. He’ll let the military stew over DADT for a while until they basically ask him to change it, rather than the other way around. It might take longer, but he figures — probably correctly — that the end result will be better for everyone. Ditto for DOMA, which doesn’t yet have the votes in Congress for repeal.
And ditto for lots of other stuff. He’s shown a disturbing willingness to compromise on financial regulation and healthcare. He hasn’t engaged much with the Waxman-Markey climate bill as it slowly gets watered down into nothing. He’s a cautious guy who doesn’t take a lot of chances unless he feels some real pressure to do so. Paradoxically, this is exactly what I expected from him but I find myself disappointed anyway. A little bit more fire in the belly would be welcome.
But he is who he is, and the same instincts that disappoint us on some issues serve him well on others. So far, anyway. The next few months — possibly the next few days in Iran — will tell us just how much real hope and change Obama’s temperament produces when the rubber finally hits the road.
