QUOTE OF THE DAY – THE SPEAKER STUMBLES – AT 8:21 A.M. ET:  Reader Susana Kohan alerts us to Wes Pruden's terrific column in today's Washington Times, in which he ridicules Obama's tendency to define national security in petty, legalistic terms:

Presidents have never before been so reticent on occasions of national peril. FDR knew no better than to say it straight and plain in the wake of Pearl Harbor. He could have, but didn't, tell Congress and the nation that "… yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date that will live in controversial memory, the respected empire of Japan, following the dictates of Shinto, a religion of peace, allegedly attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor …" Other revered figures of history offered no useful precedent, either. John Paul Jones, wreathed in smoke and fire on the deck of Bon Homme Richard, could have, but didn't, rally his men with a cry that "I have not yet begun to see what kind of deal we can get."

There were no apt examples from our friends across the sea. Winston Churchill could have, but didn't, promise England in the grim summer of 1940 that "we shall negotiate on the seas and oceans, we shall parley to defend our island as long as there is no cost attached, we shall bargain on the beaches, we shall dicker on the landing grounds, we shall beg in the fields and streets, we shall make speeches in the hills — we shall never, ever, cease to seek better terms."

COMMENT:  The tragedy of Barack Obama isn't that he's no Churchill, but that he doesn't want to be a Churchill. 

January 5, 2010