Kristol on Obama: Self-Delusion Is a Powerful Force

On Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Wednesday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol criticized President Barack Obama on the heels of a speech he gave at the U.S. Military Academy earlier in the day. Kristol’s criticism was based on the view of foreign policy he had projected in that speech.

Partial Transcript as Follows:

HEWITT: At this hour, China and Vietnam are engaged in a game of very serious confrontation in the South China Sea. And his world doesn’t admit that that could spiral, that Japan is rearming out of fear of our weakness, Bill Kristol. So here is the question. Do you think he doesn’t know? Or do you think his political instincts override the fact that he does know, because I can’t believe he doesn’t know.

KRISTOL: I don’t know. Self-delusion is a powerful force in people’s lives, and I guess I might have said at one point he knows, but he’s just kind of telling a nice story. But I think maybe he’s deluded himself. He thinks he’s Barack Obama. He sort of wants it to be this way. This is his rationale, and so it sort of is this way.

HEWITT: You know, later in the speech, and we’ll come back after the break and play another one, he talks a little bit about Russia. He talks a little bit about Syria. He talks a little bit about China as though by acknowledging that they have gone bad or are in confrontation with us he somehow solved the problem, Bill Kristol, does that add up on an abacus of anyone’s choosing that he’s left us stronger than when we were four and a half years ago?

KRISTOL: No, because what he’s knocking down, one of the straw men he knocks down, that you know, people say we shouldn’t get involved at all, he says there’s a Syrian civil war that spilled across borders, the capacity of battle hardened groups to come after us increases. Well, the Syrian civil war has spilled across borders. The capacity of battle-hardened groups to come after us has increased, and that’s the result of his policies.

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