gaffey.jpgI had a good laugh when I read Charles Krauthammer’s take on Joe Biden’s switch from pessimism in 2007 to his current optimism on Iraq Note the un-comparison to T. Roosevelt in the last sentence. (via The Corner):

Image - The Street in San Pedro, CA, named for the Vice President

Well, when I hear [the] vice president saying that he’s giving us assurances — ‘Absolutely, there’s going to be a unity government’ — this is the wrong way to go about it, I think. First of all, you shouldn’t announce it publicly if you are working behind the scenes. It gives the impression that this is a U.S. creation, the coalition that he says will emerge, and it undermines the legitimacy and the independence of such a government.

Secondly, we are not exerting that influence behind the scenes. We have a very weak ambassador. We have a president who’s shown no interest whatsoever in Iraq. He talks only about ending the war and leaving, not about success.

And — we have an administration that is linked and tied to a rigid withdrawal schedule arbitrarily chosen by Obama a year and a half ago, thinking we would have a stable government now. But in the absence of it, we have a drawdown, which weakens whatever influence America has in the first place.

So for all of those reasons we’ve had little influence. The Iranians have had influence on the shaping of the government, the Saudis have, and the Syrians and the Turks, each riding its own horse, each creating a stalemate. We have not.

What essentially has happened with the Biden speech is we’re talking loudly and carrying no stick at all.

Emphasis added. Biden is no Theodore Roosevelt, that’s for sure.