Before the editorial staff of The Weekly Standard kills the fatted calf, they should reread Obama’s [Oslo] speech in its entirety. The President has not turned a corner. He’s merely refined his most potent rhetorical technique – straddling both sides of an issue – to perfection.

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Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
-- Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Halley’s Comet made impact in the middle of K Street last Thursday.  Only a few months after President Obama’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize brought howls of derision from the conservative establishment, the right responded to Obama’s Oslo acceptance speech with a rhetorical standing ovation. 
 
Newt Gingrich declared the remarks “historic."  Sarah Palin, in a rare simpatico moment, declared her affection for the speech. Some veterans of George W. Bush’s administration went so far as to compare the 44th President’s musings on international affairs to those of his predecessor – a notion that probably would have sent Obama into cardiac arrest a year ago.
 
The inflection point for the conservative intelligentsia was Obama’s newly discovered allegiance to the righteousness of American power.   But before the editorial staff of The Weekly Standard kills the fatted calf, they should reread Obama’s speech in its entirety.  The President has not turned a corner.  He’s merely refined his most potent rhetorical technique – straddling both sides of an issue – to perfection.
 
Taking another look at the text, there’s much to like – much that belies the castration of American hegemony that Obama has long seemed to embrace.  In one graceful passage on the nature of the world, the Commander-in-Chief declared:

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth:  We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified … I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.  For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Each of these sentiments is true.  Yet none of them is particularly deserving of accolades.  Obama acknowledges that evil exists and that under certain circumstances it can only be resisted with force.  Please hold your applause.  These are not the ruminations of a philosopher-king. They are signs of sentience.
 
With slightly more subtlety, Obama also opined “Peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict.  Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.” A lovely sentiment, though not at all true (Obama should look up the term “Carthaginian Peace," a phenomenon which tends to endure).  However, as prescription, this is fine stuff.  As Clausewitz noted, "a conqueror is always a lover of peace … he would like to make his entry into our state unopposed."  
 
But for every ripple of prudence that seemed to breach Obama’s usually placid surface, there were tidal waves of nonsense.  In one utterly fatuous passage:

“ … A quarter century after the United States Senate rejected the League of Nations -- an idea for which Woodrow Wilson received this prize -- America led the world in constructing an architecture to keep the peace:  a Marshall Plan and a United Nations, mechanisms to govern the waging of war, treaties to protect human rights, prevent genocide, restrict the most dangerous weapons. In many ways, these efforts succeeded.  Yes, terrible wars have been fought, and atrocities committed.  But there has been no Third World War …”

These are the delusional ramblings of a man who needs to have his dosage adjusted.  There was, in fact, a Third World War, waged by proxy between the forces of liberal democracy and communism.  And it did not end because of the benevolent superciliousness of the United Nations. Nor were the communist atrocities (the killing fields of Pol Pot, the utter destruction of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the Soviet gulags) halted by elegant pieces of international parchment.  And if international arms control efforts are to be celebrated, it’s only for their failures. The Cold War, after all, never grew hot largely thanks to the influence of nuclear deterrence – but that insight may be a bridge too far for a President who has previously pledged “America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”  
 
The clincher – as it often is with Obama – was in the coda: “But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.”  This is speechmaking as a card trick.  Parsed closely, these words make no sense.  If one believes human nature is perfect, the question as to whether it can be perfected is self-evident.  But even deferring to the president’s probable point, we are demonstrably fallen creatures.  This principal could be invalidated only in the same way as the laws of gravity – through a violation of every observed instance of human history.

So which is Obama, the steely-eyed realist who takes the world as it is or the starry-eyed dreamer who believes that just because we didn’t arrive at the New Jerusalem yesterday doesn’t mean we won’t get there tomorrow?  As our first postmodern president, he is, of course both.  Which is to say neither.  Which is to say utterly confused.