President Obama's political instincts slipping

The skillful, sharp, ruthless political instincts that helped win the presidency of the United States for Barack Obama seem to be slipping now that he is in office. His defensive and ambiguous responses to three major issues - the budget, torture as official U.S. policy, and abortion in a speech at Notre Dame University - led me to this conclusion.On the budget, President Obama, like nearly all the economists, journalists, politicians of both parties who write about or speak on the subject, never discuss the impact of spending billions of dollars monthly on two wars of choice have on the budget. They blamed bad mortgages, mismanagement, healthcare and social security costs etc. but almost completely ignore the costs of fighting two wars, thus giving the impression of non-partisan agreement to keep the public ignorant on the subject.

Maybe the politicians, Democrats and Republicans, don't want the public to know about the war profiteers who are raking in many millions of dollars on those wars because those same profiteers are major contributors to their political campaigns. For instance, one military contractor was reportedly "paid $83.4 million in bonuses for electrical work in Iraq."

In a February 2008 article, Travis Sharp, a military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, wrote "after five years and five hundred billion dollars spent on the Iraq, war Congress must fight in 2008 to prevent President Bush from using the war budget to handcuff it, and the next president, in 2009."

On the use of torture as official U.S. policy, it is a complete waste of time and energy to try to convince the American public that such a policy violates the U.S. Constitution and long-standing international law or is morally wrong.

After 9/11 most people in this country stopped giving a hoot about such considerations. The only argument that may give them pause about supporting torture as official U.S. policy - one that President Obama, as far as I know, has refused to make - is that some day, as the country continues to indulge itself in wars of choice, their children or other relatives may be prisoners of war somewhere being tortured for information and the U.S. will be in no position to deliver sanctimonious lectures about their opponents being guilty of war crimes for violating international law.

One wonders why President Obama doesn't present this argument to the American public if he really wants to change the torture for information procedures so fiercely defend it and promote it by chicken hawk, Dick Cheney.

As for the Notre Dame speech, from a political perspective, President Obama blew a major opportunity, while the country and much of the world were watching and listening, to urge the students to pay close attention to what is happening around them today and to use their talents, resources and energy to avoid such mistakes in the future. He should have completely ignored the protestors and not even say the word "abortion." There is no middle ground with people who believe that abortion is murder.

I believe that Candidate Obama, who ran a near flawless election campaign, would have handled all three of these circumstances much more effectively than President Obama has.

Journalist/Lecturer A. Peter Bailey, a former associate editor of Ebony, is currently editor of Vital Issues: The Journal of African American Speeches. He can be reached at apeterb@verizon.net.