Obama's Libyan Performance

“We don’t have markets any more, we have theater."

This quote from investor James Rickards may have more application than he realized. The Pittsburgh Pirates no longer play baseball, they play a baseball game in a carnival. News shows deliver information and opinion as part of a multimedia extravaganza--watch Jim Cramer's show for a few minutes if you can. One of the women on FOX News is so beautiful that a man she was interviewing became distracted by her and could not speak. (She could easily wear a headdress and gown.) And those politicians reliably hold up to the form over substance creed, brilliantly answering those questions that were not asked.

"We have led...", "At my direction...", Our "interests and values...", "We have been joined...", (paraphrase) "It took more than a year for us to act in Bosnia, in Libya it took us only 31 days."

For those of you who missed Obama's speech on the American attack on Libya Monday night, the speed-reading quotes above give a good outline of the script. (It misses the rather stirring finish.) The performance shows Obama as the leader, the initiator, in charge, faster than Clinton, with everything except "the sneer of cold command" in the Libyan desert. Perhaps he was a power behind the scenes but it is more likely the Europeans are laughing up their collective sleeves. We have here, from all appearance, America's first diffident president, slow to anger, slow to act, ready to blend into the background at any threat of uncertainty. For two years the congress led; he is now a tall ship with huge sails of pronouncements but no rudder and a log book of imagined history.

Nor was the key question asked or answered: What are the circumstances that allow the United States to invade a country with impunity? Our "interests and values" were alluded to, our "values" being added to Gates' earlier statement that we had no nation interest in Libya. But the diffident are a hands off people; there is no reason for us to expect much. The appearance of involvement and action should be quite enough for the likes of us.

Nothing to ponder, legerdemain, and a stirring finish; what more could the audience demand of an entertainer.