Politico’s Alexander Burns trumpets President Obama’s newly minted reputation as a tough-on-national-security leader. In “President Obama dashes ‘Jimmy Carter’ label” he notes: “Obama’s overall approval numbers have rallied since May 1, when he announced Bin Laden’s death from the East Room of the White House.”
Burns also quotes former Bush administration official Pete Wehner, who “described Bin Laden’s death as a political ‘circuit breaker,’ writing in Commentary magazine: ‘The specter of Jimmy Carter was beginning to haunt the Obama administration. For now, at least, that narrative is stopped in its tracks.”
Yet, it is far from clear that getting bin Laden proves Obama has shed his inner Jimmy Carter. The chief goal of the Obama doctrine is to do the minimum to get by in the world — not to do nothing. Each of his decisions to send troops into harm’s way, including the Seal Team Six strike on bin Laden, reflects the president’s minimalist approach to the exercise of American power. I outlined each of these in a post at Family Security Matters.
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