Still, if we want to talk about cynicism I offer you, as Exhibit A, Daniel Pipes who believes, apparently seriously, that Obama can rescue his Presidency by going to war with Iran:
He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.
Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.
Happily this matches Pipes’s own preferences but even if one were to share his analysis of the Iranian conundrum (and I don’t) one might think the political rationale he advances for Obama following his advice is, shall we say, distasteful.[…]Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, and make the netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.
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