Barack W. Obama

John Dickerson writes that Barack Obama's stubbornness is strikingly similar to that of George Bush: Barack Obama's trip to Iraq was so presidential that at moments, he sounded like our current White House resident. When Karen Tumulty of Time asked Obama what he'd learned on his trip, he said, "It confirmed a lot of my beliefs." Lara Logan of CBS asked him if he was ever in doubt that he could lead the country in war as commander in chief, and he answered, "Never." Of course the comparison isn't entirely fair. Eventually Bush did have the presence of mind and the courage to change strategy. But Obama looks more and more like a broken clock with each day that passes: Before Obama flew to Baghdad, I asked his top foreign-policy adviser, Susan Rice, what kinds of questions he'd asked of his advisers over the months to test... [read full story]