During the campaign Barack Obama recorded a video pledging a kind of McGovernite/hippie credo for American national security policy if he were to be elected president:
I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems…
…I will not weaponize space…
…I will slow development of future combat systems…
…and I will institute an independent “Defense Priorities Board” to ensure the quadrennial defense review is not used to justify unnecessary spending…
…I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons…
…and to seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons…
…I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material…
…and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert…
…and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals…
We posted the video twice before the election and asked whether it wasn’t time for someone who covers politics for a living to ask Obama a few serious questions about this credo, or for John Mccain to note it. So far as I am aware, neither the media nor the McCain campaign took up the hint.
NRO’s Jim Geraghty has recently compiled an impressive list of expired Obama statements. The list is essentially a set of campaign promises or pledges that Obama has violated, rather in the manner of a conventional American politician. They reveal Obama’s campaign persona as something of a sham.
The pledges above fall into a different category. They go to the heart of who Obama is. Steve Schippert reviews them in “The Obama nuclear manifesto: The death of clarity.” He provides links to items indicating Obama’s fulfillment of the pledges.
As Glenn Reynolds has repeatedly observed, analogies to Jimmy Carter are off-base: “That’s a best-case scenario at this point.”
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