Given that Thomas Barnett is an avid internationalist who abhors the National Greatness strain of foreign policy that McCain champions, I was not at all shocked to see via the Security folder in my RSS reader that he has endorsed Barack Obama.
Obama’s task is the great unwinding of the Bush debacle, which Bush himself started these past two years, but which is likely to go four more. If Obama spends his first term unwinding both the financial crisis and the two wars well, then he wins a second term and there stands his real chance to imprint a different world moving forward.
McCain is just not the guy to do the unwinds. I honestly think he’d be a complete disaster, so my expectations for Obama are suitably set: unwind and reset in first term, come out charging like the America the world needs in term two.
Done well, this is one of the great rule-set resets of American and world history.
I was however a bit bemused when, in the very next post in the folder — timestamped a mere four minutes earlier — Barnett chided Obama:
Honestly, my first thought when I saw those pics of Obama reading Zakaria’s book, with that title, was, “that’s a great way to lose an election.”
We are a slightly center-right nation right now, and if Obama loses track of that, he’ll be a weak-ass Jimmy Carter in office, especially with all those Clinton-clones hanging around (Bacevich’s point in the LAT recently).
Not exactly a ringing endorsement!
