The Daily Caller is circulating a poll that asks “Who would make a better president, Obama or Putin?” The responders to the poll are overwhelmingly of the belief that both are equally bad. Here’s why they’re wrong.
The Libertarian Republic is fashioning itself to be one of the chief critics of the Obama regime. We frequently produce columns denouncing the president for his redistributionist schemes, his lack of respect for civil liberties and we have even gone in-depth into why we believe he should be impeached. But that does not make him a dictator on the level of Vladimir Putin.
The problem with the argument that Putin and Obama are the same lies in the fallacy of moral equivalency. Although President Obama is arguably a criminal for assassinating American citizens without trial, in his defense he likely believes that this was in the interest of national security. We may disagree on that, but the people who don’t agree with me are not doing so because they want to silence their political opposition. That is not the case with Putin, who has murdered journalists and poisoned with polonium people with whom he disagrees, or feels threatened by.
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has, perhaps unwisely, contributed to the narrative of Obama as a weakling and Putin as a strong man to be admired when she recently stated that Obama wears mom jeans while Putin wrestles bears. That may be funny, but it feeds into the narrative that somehow Obama not confronting Putin is a sign of weakness, rather than an acknowledgment of the practical realities of the situation in Ukraine. Our president keeping America out of a conflict is not a sign of weakness.
American Conservative’s Dan McCarthy sums up neatly why people who are praising Putin due to his comparable strength are feeding into a twisted mindset.
Unfortunately, the answer is all too plain: if you think that the U.S. federal government is the source of all evil in your life, your country, and the world, then it stands to reason—almost—that whatever contradicts Washington is on the side of truth. Moscow and Beijing therefore become beacons of light. The ideologues who fall prey to this don’t necessarily hate America—there’s a distinction between the country and its government, after all—and they don’t think of themselves as pro-authoritarian or, in the case of the Middle East, pro-dictator. But they do think, ultimately, that foreign authoritarians and dictators are really more liberal than the liberal-but-really-authoritarian United States. It’s a sour love affair: the U.S. fails to live up to liberal ideals, or even to come close, so regimes that have no intention of abiding by them must be no worse, or indeed a great deal better.
The number of such misguided people is pretty small, but they play a very useful role for the likes of Bill Kristol and other hawks, who can then point to these few loons, like the scattered nutcases with 9/11 Truther placards at a Ron Paul rally, to demonize everyone who’s against American military misadventures. The RT libertarians/leftists then turn around and tell those whose ranks they’ve infected, “See? You get attacked as ‘unpatriotic conservatives’ even if you don’t make the case that Saddam Hussein is just a misunderstood humanitarian!” Neocons are fond of talking about how the extreme left and right intersect, but it’s the Kristols and RTers who really depend on one another. Each justifies the other’s crackpot arguments, at least in a world in which ideology counts for more than hard reality.
Making arguments that somehow a former community organizer, who was democratically elected, is the same as a former member of the KGB, who came to power through iron and blood, are somehow the same, is wrong and intellectually dishonest.
Obama is not my favorite person, but as I’ve said before: I like my evils like I like my government… lesser.
Now Mr. President, how about that beer? We need to talk about that $3.9 Trillion dollar budget you’re foisting on us that I’d say comes dangerously close to what we might call… tyrannical?
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