LOOKING CLOSELY - AT 8:40 A.M. ET:  Despite Dick Cheney's critiques of some parts of the Obama security policies, the fact is that in many other areas the president has adopted Bush/Cheney programs, to our considerable relief.  Charles Krauthammer, who has become one of the prime targets of the journalistic left, explains that you have to look carefully, not only at what President Obama says, but what he does:

If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.

Ouch.  And we have to believe that the president's decisions are based in some measure on the rap he's taken for appearing soft in national-security matters.  That's one effect of the kind of critique that the former vice president is giving.

Krauthammer explains the Obama technique:

Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he's doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

And finally...

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

COMMENT:  Krauthammer is fundamentally correct, although he may be overstating it to some degree.  There are still troubling aspects to the Obama approach, such as a kind of groveling to foreign nations and cultures that can only encourage the terror masters. 

In a few weeks Mr. Obama goes on another magical mystery tour, this time to Egypt, Germany and France.  He will deliver a speech to the Muslim world in Egypt, will visit Dresden and Buchenwald in Germany, and commemorate D-Day in France.  He's had plenty of time to absorb the criticism that past trips have received - namely that he projects weakness rather than strength.  We'll examine how well he does this time, and see if the Krauthammer thesis holds up.  As an American, I hope it holds up well.

May 22, 2009