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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (334480)	11/18/2009 3:33:46 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	10 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794009

In my mind, it is really foolish cowardice on President Obama's part to pretend AG Holder made this call alone. Obama owns the decision whether he owns up to it or not, so he might as well get out there and own it. That's not Obama's MO. He has a passive-aggressive style of management. Yassir Arafat used to manage like this. Arafat would control the purse strings, but have multiple overlapping patronage/security apparatuses ("czars", anyone?) and give them contradictory orders. Things never ran very well but he kept control of the patronage. (Palestinians would joke that Arafat assigned two drivers to every car, and told them drive in opposite directions.) It was semi-chaotic but Arafat liked it that way; he wanted plausible deniability esp. as he was always lying to everybody about what he was doing (King Hussein once said that Arafat never met a bridge he didn't double-cross.). When things got too hot for him, Arafat would "escape by running ahead" -- he would blow things up (literally), start an intifada, a war, etc., and make good his escape in the ensuing chaos. The Obama equivalent is throwing out some new source of outrage for his enemies, such as Holder's decision to try KSM in New York. There is so much controversial stuff out there already, the Obami figure that some of it will slide by under the radar.