NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who after a 2008 presidential debate hailed Barack Obama’s foreign policy knowledge (“boy, he did show a command of foreign policy in terms of the nuts and bolts of it”), on Sunday’s Meet the Press trumpeted now-President Obama’s Libya action: “This was pretty remarkable – bringing this whole coalition together and getting the Arab League” to back military action.
Mitchell also proclaimed Ambassador Susan Rice “did a remarkable job at the UN” where she delivered “some very adept diplomacy.”
Mitchell’s praise for Obama came in the context of acknowledging “the problem that the President has in projecting American values is that he first of all believes in a multi-lateralist policy,” but instead of seeing that as a negative, she declared “on that score he has really accomplished that. This was pretty remarkable – bringing this whole coalition together and getting the Arab League.”
Susan Rice did a remarkable job at the UN. No one could have predicted, even critics of the policy could not predict such a muscular resolution being approved and the abstensions from Russia and China. This came much faster than anyone expected. And came with some very adept diplomacy....
The problem that the President has in projecting American values is that he first of all believes in a a multi-lateralist policy. Now on that score he has really accomplished that. This was pretty remarkable – bringing this whole coalition together and getting the Arab League.
— Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
