The commander who won't

I voted for Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary, in large part because his speeches thrilled me as no other presidential candidate in my lifetime. (Jack Kennedy came close.) By November however I had become disenchanted, and now I'm just befuddled. Where is the great speechifier of 2008? Peggy Noonan asks the same question in the Wall Street Journal today, and asks it better than I ever could:

I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he's home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It's what presidents do! And this is particularly important now, because there are reasons to fear the current involvement will either escalate and produce a lengthy conflict or collapse and produce humiliation.

Unlike me, Noonan is skeptical of our military action in Libya. (I only fret that it came too late.) But she is spot on--actually very gentle--in analyzing Obama's failures in this, his latest war. He is a commander-in-chief who refuses to command. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford