are healthy because they have been inoculated against diseases such as polio. Who invented the polio vaccine, an enfeebled old leftist academic in Oslo? Nah, it was a man named Jonas Salk. He was an American.

Europe’s elites experience Mr. Obama as a historical accident that needs and deserves their encouragement. Actually he was elected with 69.5 million votes, and you know, they were cast by Americans. Go figure.


I just don’t think he thinks that way but it would be a heck of a speech [Or Obama could go this way...]. And do let’s note that Colin Powell took a similar tack at Davos a few years back:


Mr. Powell noted that the United States had sent its soldiers into foreign...

are healthy because they have been inoculated against diseases such as polio. Who invented the polio vaccine, an enfeebled old leftist academic in Oslo? Nah, it was a man named Jonas Salk. He was an American.

Europe’s elites experience Mr. Obama as a historical accident that needs and deserves their encouragement. Actually he was elected with 69.5 million votes, and you know, they were cast by Americans. Go figure.


I just don’t think he thinks that way but it would be a heck of a speech [Or Obama could go this way...]. And do let’s note that Colin Powell took a similar tack at Davos a few years back:


Mr. Powell noted that the United States had sent its soldiers into foreign wars over the last century, most recently in Afghanistan, without having imperial designs on the territories it secured.

“We’ve put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives,” he said, his voice growing hoarse. “We’ve asked for nothing but enough land to bury them in.”


Ms. Noonan has written half of Obama’s speech, the “There are those who love America uncritically” part.


AMPLIFYING: Re “I don’t think Obama thinks that way” - Obama’s standard and most comfortable pose is that of the mediator, the conciliator, the balancer, the bridge between rival points of view. In 2002 he was not opposed to all wars, just dumb wars. He deplores Jeremiah Wrights’s unreconstructed views, but he also deplores his racist, typical white grandmother. He’s got a crazy bombmaking friend in Bill Ayers, but he has a crazy pro-life friend in Senator Tom Coburn. Obama is just the man in the middle, calmly trying to sort it out and helping the rest of us do the same.

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