Unlike Spencer, I think Leon Wieseltier is exactly right to worry that Obama's signals on foreign policy do not convey "the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. ... [Obama] seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff." When Obama talks about changing "the mindset" that led us into the Iraq War, he's talking, almost specifically, about Leon Wieseltier's mindset; the belief that "hardness" is analogous to wisdom, that seriousness requires being "disabused" of one's instinctual aversion to brutality, that the "hurtful' and "traditional" stuff has worked. "One of the striking features of Obama's victory speeches," writes Leon, "is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense." Leon wants a leader to brings crowds to their feet with talk of war. His skepticism of the Obama campaign on these grounds is among the most powerful arguments I've yet heard for Obama's candidacy.
