Eleanor Clift on this weekend's "McLaughlin Group" made a truly absurd comment about the disparate ways Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan handled Libya during their respective presidencies that left Monica Crowley in stitches.
After Clift mocked Reagan by saying, "You don’t need leadership that goes into a Muslim country all alone," Monica laughed loudly before replying, "American presidential leadership, Eleanor, never goes out of style" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
MONICA CROWLEY, WASHINGTON TIMES: By the way, we've done these no-fly zones over the former Yugoslavia, over Iraq. It doesn't necessarily prevent the kind of humanitarian slaughter that we're trying to prevent here. Look, two differences between Reagan and Obama. Number one, American leadership. Reagan didn't wait for any kind of international stamp of approval to move. And number two, with Reagan, there was a clear mission, a clear strategy, and clear American presidential leadership.
ELEANOR CLIFT, NEWSWEEK: That was before 9/11.
CROWLEY: We've had none of that in this case.
CLIFT: That was before 9/11, before George W. Bush…
CROWLEY: It doesn't matter! You know what, you can argue, Eleanor, that post-9/11 you need it even more.
PAT BUCHANAN: Let me move in.
CLIFT: You don't need leadership that goes into a Muslim country all alone.
CLIFT: You don't need leadership – excuse me – I want to finish.
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, HOST: Alright, quickly.
CLIFT: You don’t need leadership that goes into a Muslim country all alone. This was an international…
CROWLEY: American presidential leadership, Eleanor, never goes out of style.
CLIFT: coalition in a post-9/11 age and a post-George W. Bush era, where we created a war in Iraq that was unnecessary…
CROWLEY: Oh, here you go.
CLIFT: …and left in utter…
CROWLEY: That has nothing to do with it, Eleanor.
CLIFT: It has plenty, it has more to do with it than Reagan 25 years ago.
For those keeping score at home, leadership in Clift's view is a president taking orders from the United Nations and starting a war with a country that didn't attack America and doing so without Congressional support.
By contrast, it's not leadership when a president does a quick military response on a dictator that just killed innocent Americans in a German discotheque.
As I've been saying for years, it takes a lot of rationalizations to be a liberal these days.
Further supporting this assertion has been all these perpetually dovish liberal media members like Clift - folks that have been bashing Bush over Iraq and Afghanistan for years - getting behind Obama's attack on Libya.
Really makes you wonder how any of these people can look themselves in the mirror when they brush their teeth.
