The President finds himself in probably the most difficult foreign policy jam that he is likely to face.  In fact I think it may be the most difficult one that any President has faced in the last twenty years.  First of all the President brings much of this on himself but Presidents Bush (41), Clinton, and Bush (43) bear some responsibility for this as well.  Obama owns a good portion of the responsibility because of his incredibly weak foreign policy.  Obama has seen to it that the we have almost no credibility at all with other nations, he’s punted or taken the easy way out of every issue thus far and our friends no longer believe that we’ll support them, and our enemies have no fear that we’ll stand up to them.

Now why is this situation particularly difficult you ask?  Well the Palestinians have a history or violence when they don’t get their way.  Palestinian President Abbas has competing factions with Hamas, Fatah, etc and in order to keep his own house in order has to make a bold move.  He can’t be seen negotiating away territory to the Israeli’s because Hamas and their backers in Iran and Syria (among others..) will have his head.  So he goes out and insists on UN recognized statehood, France and the UK probably don’t want to see this anymore than the US but don’t have the courage to outright veto it on the security council.  Russia and China will oppose anything the US is for and is for anything the US is against.  They will do anything to make the US look bad.

So if the US outright veto’s the Palestinian bid for statehood then we’re likely to see renewed violence against US interests and Israel not to mention our other allies in the world.  The Saudi’s will likely inflict more pressure on the US in the way of oil production and there is a much greater threat that the violence won’t be limited to that part of the world. 

If the President votes for it then he loses the next election.  Not a big deal because he’s already likely to lose that anyway, but if votes for statehood then he will almost assuredly lose the Jewish vote for him and his party.  Aside from the politics though he runs the risk of really angering the Israeli’s who have the ability to stop listening to the typical US calls for restraint.  If that happens there is a very real danger of a wide conflict spanning many Arab nations.  A conflict that Israel could win if they ignore US and European interference and that is something they are more likely to do.

Yes previous administrations have contributed to this problem by simply believing you can negotiate your way out of it.  When viewed in that context we really have to go back to the Carter administration as the centerpiece of the problem.  It really was created there anyway but every President since has failed to lead on this issue and instead relied on a State Department view that you can negotiate your way through any issue to avoid conflict in spite of the fact that history teaches us otherwise.

Obama has been busy the last several days trying to convince Abbas to abandon this idea.  That just won’t happen because if he does he will be seen as a puppet of Obama and will likely be ousted by hardline factions of Hamas and the violence will resume.  About the only thing Obama could do is abstain and ride out the storm.  Abbas would get what he wants (because no one else would veto it..) and the only casualty would be that Obama looks ineffective and weak.  No big deal there because he already looks like that…

It’s been sixteen years since Hillary’s assault on healthcare.  That assault led in part to the Republican takeover in 1994 but one has to look at the differences between today and sixteen years ago.

 

In 1993 Bill Clinton ran on the economy and succeeded in beating George HW Bush on that issue in spite of the fact that Bush had in fact led the country out of the recession by the election.  Clinton felt he was invincible so he let his wife take on the issue of healthcare.  The thing that Clinton underestimated was that the economy was already rebounding and people were positive on the economic situation.  As such people didn’t see healthcare as that big a problem that required a government takeover and as such it went down to defeat.

 

So we move forward to the last eight years where we have had a drumbeat of Democrats, in congress and the media, telling people just how bad everything was.  This in spite of the fact that for much of the George W Bush years the economy has been booming.  The media succeeded in talking the economy into recession in late 2008 along with a democrat controlled congress that created the mortgage mess.

 

We now have the perfect storm for Democrats.  They have created circumstances where we have unemployment near 10%, we have healthcare costs through the roof mostly because trial lawyers have driven the cost of malpractice insurance through the roof.  We have government takeovers of the auto industry, and the banking industry.  We haven’t seen misery like this since the days of Jimmy Carter.

 

So now there is a narrow window of opportunity for Obama and Democrats to pass socialized medicine.  i call it a narrow window because the have to be careful, they have to orchestrate this takeover and spin it so it appears that they are helping everyone.  If people perceive this for what it is, another power grab by liberals and Obama then they could see a backlash.  People are already weary of the takeovers they’ve seen in the automotive and banking sectors.

 

The Democrats running congress are talking of big tax increases, the global warming bill isn’t widely supported by voters but congress is beholden to the environuts that elected them.  The more they force this stuff down the throats of the American people the greater the consequences in 2010 and 2012.

 

So in the end it appears that Democrats have created the circumstances under which socialized medicine may be possible.  Maybe they learned from 1994 but will the country be better off from the lessons learned?  I doubt it.