Multilateralism: It is commonly observed that President Obama never started governing because he never stopped campaigning. He campaigned in his West Point speech all right — for United Nations secretary-general.
We've got a president who has unblushingly told us he's "a better speechwriter than my speechwriters," knows "more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors" and is "a better political director than my political director."
Not to mention that "like any politician at this level, I've got a healthy ego." Uh, no kidding.
An intellect that enormous must feel confined by merely leading the free world (or, more accurately, not leading). Such boundless cerebral prowess deserves a real challenge, such as running the whole world.
The president obviously agrees; his address to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday sounded much like the launch of a campaign for still-higher office: presiding over the hopelessly corrupt, tyrant-dominated United Nations.
After briefly giving lip service to the U.S. using "military force, unilaterally if necessary, when our core interests demand it," Obama quickly placed America under the U.N. umbrella. When faced with crises that "do not directly threaten us," he said, "we must mobilize allies and partners to take collective action."
Great wartime presidents never had to boast of U.S. power; they used it. But "those who think America is weak are wrong" was the theme of Obama's speech.
Those "who suggest that America is in decline, or has seen its global leadership slip away, are either misreading history or engaged in partisan politics," Obama claimed. "Think about it. Our military has no peer."
There's a similarity to Jimmy Carter's 1979 "malaise" speech, touting "the outward strength of America, a nation that is at peace tonight everywhere in the world, with unmatched economic power and military might." Six months later, Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, and less than a year after that Ronald Reagan was called in to rebuild the Pentagon and a battered U.S. economy.
"I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being," Obama told the cadets, but he defined that as the willingness to affirm "international norms ... through our actions."
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee gave Obama its award on spec, less than nine months after his inauguration in 2009, to promote "multilateral diplomacy" and an "emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play."
Now the U.N., acting similarly, can make him "president of the world." Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's term expires in early 2017. If Obama were his successor, the U.S., even under a Republican administration, might not veto an ex-U.S. president in the Security Council.
Who would the U.N. like better as secretary-general than an American who wants the world's lone superpower placed firmly under the rules made by the U.N. General Assembly, the vast majority of whose members are undemocratic and pine for redistributed U.S. wealth?
A secretary-general who can get the U.S. to accept U.N. rule.