Republicans have a problem. They must see that a Republican becomes president in 2016. But they have no right to concentrate all their energy and angst on the next election, because this president inflicts real damage on the nation and the world almost every day, and it’s up to Republicans to staunch the bleeding while they wait for the ambulance.
The reviews are in: the whole world, friend and foe, left and right, east and west, north and south, understands the President of the United States to be a naïf and a fool. The outstanding question is only whether he is a good man over his head (as the global Left seems to believe) or — as the evidence suggests — he has always looked at America and Americans with snide condescension. That seems to be his favorite emotion.
Obama will nonetheless serve out his term. But that doesn’t give Republicans the right to shrug off the damage his administration continually inflicts. In Robert Gates and Ashton Carter, Obama somehow arrived at two capable Defense Secretaries. We’ve been less lucky with his catastrophic secretaries of state, but we have no right to give up.
A high U.S. official tells the world that the latest Paris mass murders were really bad compared to the previous ones. Of course, the Charlie Hebdo massacre was wrong — not everyone has the nuanced moral sensibility of a John Kerry — but you can understand how the terrorists felt. Someone had published a cartoon that seriously annoyed them, so what would you expect them to do, for God’s sake? Obviously, murder everyone concerned. That doesn’t make it right, but boys will be boys; would everyone just lighten up a little?
Republicans must retain their sense of proportion in these loony tune times. We sometimes act as if the normal rule that calls for those who disgrace themselves to be got rid of no longer applies. If that’s true, Republicans have been complicit in cancelling it. Ryan and McConnell, McCain and Romney and all serious GOP presidential candidates have a duty to demand Kerry’s resignation. They might even get it, because even Democrats cringe when this man opens his mouth. Whereupon the Obama roulette wheel is unlikely to nominate anyone worse suited to be secretary of state (such as who?); and we might even get lucky. In any case, we have a duty to try. If we hear John Kerry speaking for this nation without doing our very best to get rid of him, we incur our share of the guilt and the shame that will be Obama’s real, lasting “legacy.”