Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.
Often, foreign policy - which, by definition, is largely out of American control - is simply a matter of not doing the wrong thing, the unwise thing.
The best example of Obama's success in foreign policy is Iran.
Americans almost never elect presidents on the basis of foreign policy.
I spend much too much time on the Web with e-mail and surfing and reading my key sites, and a whole day can go by, and you wonder, 'What did I do today?'
I need to protect myself from my own addictive impulse.
Last year, in the year 2008, it just became normal to watch great American institutions crumble, almost dissolve like sand.
The war in Afghanistan is not of a peace with the rest of Obama's worldview. It's a holdover from the era that his election was supposed to bring to a close.
The difference between a reporter, a newspaper columnist, a paid speaker, a television personality, a radio talk show host, a blogger, a movie producer, a publicist, and a political strategist, is growing less - and not more - distinct.
I worked as a carpenter for a few years. I began writing. I wrote a book about my time in Africa - that came out in 1988 - called 'The Village of Waiting.'
The Iraq war was always a long shot. But it was made immeasurably longer by its principal architects in Washington, including Douglas Feith, who ignored expert advice, reserved most of their effort for fighting each other in ideological battles, and regarded the Iraqi people as an afterthought.
The hollowing out of the heartland was good for Walmart's bottom line: its slogan might have been an amoral maxim attributed to Lenin - 'The worse, the better.'
Together, Apple and Walmart represent the intense separation of American life into blue and red, rich and poor, overpriced and undersold, hyperconnected and left behind.
Part of the mystique of blogs is their protean quality: They work both sides of the divide between politics and media, further blurring the already fuzzy distinctions between reporter, pundit, political operative, activist, and citizen.
The constellation of opinion called the blogosphere consists, like the stars themselves, partly of gases. This is what makes blogs addictive - that is, both pleasurable and destructive: They're so easy to consume and so endlessly available.
A curious thing about this rarefied world is that bloggers are almost unfailingly contemptuous toward everyone except one another.
Over the years, America had become more like Wal-Mart. It had gotten cheap. Prices were lower, and wages were lower. There were fewer union factory jobs and more part-time jobs as greeters.
Pay attention to other people's nightmares because they might be contagious.
By the fall of 2007, my last remaining Iraqi friend in Baghdad had left. Once he was gone, my connection to the country and the war began to thin, even as the terror diminished. I missed the improvement that came with the surge, and so, in my nervous system, I never quite registered it.
American wars in Muslim countries created some extremists and inflamed many more while producing a security vacuum that allowed them to wreak mayhem.
