Where Are The Old-Style Presidents?

And by old-style, I think of, say, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and the Bushes père et fils. Joe's performance in Tel Aviv. which begins at about 4:05 in the video, is none of the above. He's looking down, reading very deliberately from notecards in an affectless tone, barely avoiding slurring.

"They're committed evils that uh, and atrocities that, uh, make ISIS, uh, look uh somewhat more rational. Y'know uh -- Americans are grieving with you. They really are. And Americans are worried. Americans are worried because they know there's uh this is not an easy field'a navigate whatcha havta do."

At about 5:58, he threatens to veer into another trademark self-serving account of days gone by: "Y'know, uh, years ago I asked the Secretary of State when we were serving in the Senate [presumably John Kerry] to write something for a man -- said, uh, you know a line that I think is appropriate, he said, uh, we need, uh, not just uh -- well, I won't go into it, I'll wait'll later, takin' too much time, but the point is this, that, uh, I'm deeply saddened and outraged by the uh, explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. . ."

I've got to assume Joe's handlers arranged that Joe and Bibi would be seated, when an Obama, a Trump, a Dubya, or a Clinton would be standing. Netanyahu himself during his statement was on the edge of his seat, almost ready to stand up throughout it. Joe was clearly tired and making a pro forma appearance. It was just as well that Jordan earlier canceled a summit with King Abdullah II and Egypt's President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, because Joe likely couldn't have handled it.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature. It takes me back to the Oval Office meeting with Israel's President Herzog at the White House in July, where Joe also read in an offhand manner from note cards and seemed almost to drift off to sleep. There can be no question that Democrat administrations have been backing away from Israel,when back in the day, Harry Truman had both a visceral sympathy for the new state and a recognition that alignment with Israel would cement Jewish membership in the New Deal coalition.

This piece at The Federalist goes into some detail on the history and motivation of Obama's aim to diminish US support for Israel -- which also means eventually dropping Jews from the Democrat coalition.

In August, Tablet magazine published a much-discussed, comprehensive interview between David Samuels and Obama biographer David Garrow. The biggest headlines that emerged from that interview had to do with Garrow uncovering letters where Obama wrote in detail about his gay sex fantasies. But buried beneath that revelation was a substantial discussion of Obama’s anti-Israel politics. Or as Tablet’s David Samuels put it, “Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel.” As Samuels went on to note, the inexplicable fixation Obama had with making Iran — the world’s leading state sponsor of terror attacks, and the same country behind Hamas’ atrocities in Israel over the weekend — a regional hegemon in spite of Israeli (and Saudi) objections is ample proof of that.

. . .“The sheer amount of political capital and focus Obama put into achieving the [Iran nuclear deal] during his second term, to the near-exclusion of other goals, suggests that the deal was central to his politics. It also carries more than a whiff of the kind of politics in which the American Empire is seen not just as unexceptional, but also, in some ways, as actively evil,” observed Samuels. “It was a politics born out of the confluence of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, which saw a racist war abroad being used to protect a racist power structure at home. That old alliance of civil rights, anti-imperialism, and identity politics made the Democratic Party that Obama positioned himself to lead — college-educated, corporate-controlled — seem cool, allowing it to use post-1960s radical ideology as a language to sell stuff.”

Whatever the history, and whatever the hypocrisy that might be involved, Joe's shambling public demeanor in situations like his visit to Israel makes me nostalgic for Obama, who always displayed a focus, a public crispness and agility that's nowhere to be found with Joe. If we can't have Trump back, dogone it, I want Obama!