Two thoughts on Tuesday...

The idea that Obama is some kind of socialist makes real leftists snicker into their frosted mini-wheats--but I think the Right has stumbled into an inchoate self-fulfilling prescience about health care reform if does turn out to contain a viable public option.   The word "socialist" has been flung around as a epithet with such lack of discrimination that it's losing its sting.  Moreover, if the public option proves to be popular and viable, identifying new reforms as "socialist"--even if they actually are--may prove to be an inadvertent argument in their favor. 

If U.S. forces in Afghanistan could hogtie Osama bin Laden and bring him back to New York, then Obama could probably withdraw unilaterally from Afghanistan without much domestic political cost, save for the usual caterwauling from the neocans.  I'm not saying that should be the goal in Afghanistan. My point is that people in the U.S.  think about foreign policy--and government policy in general--in terms of celebrity and personality to such an extent that Obama could do that whether or not withdrawing from Afghanistan is a wise policy. 

R.
 
http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/