The United States needs to be not so much loved as it needs to be respected. Sometimes, that requires us to take actions that generate controversy. I'm not at all sure that that's what the Obama administration believes.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Americans not to do something, he has a go-to line: 'That's not who we are.' Whether the issue involves discrimination, immigration, torture, criminal violence or health care, he invokes the nation's very identity.
Mr. Obama's approach to engagement to some degree makes him dependent on people who wish neither him nor America well. This doesn't have to end badly and I hope that it doesn't - but it's not an ideal position after one's first year in power.
The American people deserve to know exactly which laws the Obama Administration is refusing to enforce and why.
President Obama is not polarizing, but the media sure is.
To somebody like Obama, substantive opposition is not tolerable. The objective is to eliminate all opposition - be it a political party, be it media, or what have you.
President Obama is more and more beginning to look like the hypocrite-in-chief when it comes to the war on terrorism. All sorts of things that he criticized the president for, he's actually continued and even extended. This drone attack program, he's got it at the highest level ever.
Obama and the Democrats were so critical of what Bush did, the interrogations, the secret prisons, Guantanamo and all of that, and even the war on terror. Obama won't use the word. He's made war on the war on terror.
It's hardly news that the Obama administration is intensely and, in many respects, unprecedentedly hostile toward the news-gathering process.
It seems clear to me that the Obama Administration has no human rights policy. That is, while in some inchoate sense they would like respect for human rights to grow around the world, as all Americans would, they have no actual policy to achieve that goal - and they subordinate it to all their other policy goals.
You know, President Obama feels very strongly that the government has a responsibility to engage with the American people, as well as with the world community.