barack obama soft power

Has Bush turned his back on McCain?

President Bush gave a speech on America’s role in the world on Thursday, and while the setting and the style could hardly be different, there were some striking parallels between his and Senator Barack Obama’s.

I have been wondering this myself.

Bush rigidly stuck to the policy of “no timeline” until Maliki seized on Obama’s withdrawal policy, and then quite unexpectedly (even though he had ignored Iraqi calls for a general timeline many times before), Bush reversed himself even knowing it was a center piece of the McCain campaign.

Similiarly, McCain latched onto Bush’s pitch to lease more public land to oil companies, and then when McCain took off with that and even went so far as to create the fantasy that somehow revoking the executive order had magically caused investors to reconsider (and not demand destruction and building inventories as we can all read in any financial column), but then the Bush administration dismissed that claim.

I think Bush can be a very spiteful man and punish people who haven’t agreed with him in the past when he has the opportunity (and I could provide a lengthy list of examples), and I am begining to wonder if these uncoordinated snubs are payback.

Riz Khan – Obama’s foreign policy report card – Part 2