Maybe it was just media hype, or should I say, it must have been media hype, something by which they could sell more airtime and ink ex nihilo. For surely -- please, tell me this is so -- Obama's progressive base didn't really rise up in prerevolutionary arms as the media intimated -- did it? -- over this harmless moderation:
I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.
Now, I am aware of a few voices on the left -- a few, mind you, but not really the "base" -- whose political chastity felt violated by these words. My only guess is that they preferred Obama to say, "On my fact-finding mission to Iraq this summer, I'll seek no facts and brook no opposition to what I already believe" -- à la George W. Bush -- or words to that effect.
The right would have had a field day. See, folks? Obama is no different from what he lampoons: he molds information -- even that from our esteemed military professionals -- to fit policy, and not the other way around.
At which point those abovementioned few on the left likely would have said, Yep, Obama had best watch himself. He's placing himself in a right-wing trap, he's opening himself to Catch-22 fire -- precisely what we feared. He should have known better, because we always do.
But my other guess -- and there's no polling available on this yet, so guessing is as good as it gets -- is that actual disappointment from the progressive base over Obama's actual words was far more limited and narrow than the media would have had us believe. Anything else is just too unbelievable.
There was, of course, some left-leaning outrage expressed by the vocationally outraged. And that, in turn of course, always makes for good copy. Asked the media: "Has Obama gone too far this time with his winning strategy? Has he finally lost those who brung him to the dance? Joining us tonight to discuss this internal rebellion ..."
Thursday, however, Obama didn't have to wait till nighttime. The outrage professionals, in league with the media and their intriguing narrative of a mushrooming rift on the left, instantly pounced. All was lost. Obama had abused and abandoned his base for the last time, said the former, with the latter lapping it up. He's an unprincipled cad of the old, not the new, politics, they said, and thereby undeserving of the left's angelic support.
Obama, in a follow-up news conference, then pounced with the same rapidity, if not superior exasperation:
We’re going to try this again. Apparently, I wasn’t clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq. Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war -- responsibly, deliberately, but decisively. And I have seen no information that contradicts the notion that we can bring our troops out safely at a pace of one to two brigades a month, and, again, that pace translates into having our combat troops out in 16 months’ time.
Will "refinements" be required? Of course they will.
I'm aware of no military operation in the history of mankind that ever proceeded precisely according to original plans. "Refinement" is merely a three-dollar political word for "Snafu." But it didn't change Obama's fundamental position on Iraq one bit.
On the other hand, Obama's terminology was also invested in the happy quality of playing to the middle -- those voters who, like most others, detest our presence in Iraq but are susceptible to John McCain's argument of Democratic hastiness.
The proper response? The ambiguity of "refinement." It's general-election wiggle-room galore -- that marvelous stuff that victorious campaigns are made of.
As for those few, dyspeptic voices on the left who already seem habitually unsettled by Obama's pragmatism? I think they misunderstood what he meant by a "new politics" for Democrats, which in fact embraces a certain bifurcation. Yes, he intended a kinder and gentler mode of the art, but he also meant the winning kind.
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