The JV Team

The CIA has just tripled the estimated number of jihadists who belong to ISIS … the Junior Varsity (JV) team as Obama described it earlier this year … to well over 30,000. This band of bench warmers now have sophisticated American weaponry captured from the Iraqi non-army, huge amounts of cash appropriated from the banks they have overrun in northern Iraq and Syria … augmented daily by millions of dollars from the Iraqi oil they are selling on the black market, and a brutal propaganda machine that rivals what Goebbels had in Nazi Germany.

And their ranks are swelling daily with foreign fighters traveling from about 80 nations around the world through Turkey … eager to fight for the sake of the caliphate … see: CNN Story. Has Obama and his crew conjured up the gumption to defeat this ragtag team? Somehow I doubt that the United States is anywhere close to getting ahead of the curve on this matter. President Obama has been describes as the “reluctant warrior.” I think that Europe and the rest of the Arab world can be categorized as even less eager to enter into this fray. That is the rub.

How do we then proceed? The Iraqi army has shown itself to be ineffectual. We can’t sort the good guys from the bad in the Free Syrian Army. Therefore, the only boots on the ground we really can count on are the Kurds … who for some stupid reason we can’t supply with heavy weapons … and about 1,500 American Special Forces. I don’t think that this will cut it … given the current pace of ISIS growth and "allied" lethargy.  (We won’t even be bombing targets in Syria for a month!) This is why ISIS is rapidly becoming as existential a threat as we have seen since the time of Suleiman and the Ottoman Empire.

I once described President Obama as Mr. Cool … see: Mr. Cool. Unfortunately, I think we now need Mr. Hot at the helm ... and this we can't possibly get for over another two years. It doesn't look good.

Ice Cube

President Obama faces a bit of a dilemma tomorrow night in his critical debate at Hofstra University with Mitt Romney.  If he emulates his sidekick, Joe Biden, and emotes himself into a fiery frenzy, he will be going across the grain of his carefully-constructed image of Mr. Cool (see my previous blog entry: Mr. Cool).  I am convinced that his seeming unflappable demeanor was a big asset in his run for the Presidency in 2008 ... and for his continued popularity among the viewers of TV shows like The View and The Dave Letterman Show.   Since television is a cool medium, this u-turn in style may have the unintended consequence of sullying his aura, particularly among females (as I am convinced was the result of Biden's debate buffoonery.)

So, tomorrow night, Obama must walk a thin line between being aggressively hot and being passively cool.  I can't predict how he will actually perform, but, if Obama can pull off this tricky maneuver, Romney will be back climbing a steep hill to 270 electoral votes.

Mr. Cool

The then Senator Obama once told Harry Reid that his "gift" was being able to read from a teleprompter so easily.  That certainly is true, but he has a much larger asset ... and that is his "coolness".  Marshall McLuhan once prophetically observed that television is a cool medium.  And President Obama fits this medium like a chamois glove.  He even strides "cool."  I seldom can watch him perform on television without singing to myself that old 1959 Coasters' song Charlie Brown:

Who walks in the classroom, cool and slow
Who calls the English teacher, Daddy-O      (see: All Lyrics)

So, in the upcoming Presidential election, Obama (I like to call him The Barry to reprise that other cool media character, The Donald), has the natural advantage in the upcoming debates.  Neither Rick Santorum nor Mitt Romney nor Newt Gingrich are particularly cool personalities ... Romney is cooler than the other two, but still boiling hot compared to The Barry.  What does this suggest?  To me, it implies that, if the election is determined on emotion (as it was in 2008), Obama will win in a walk.  However, if the U.S. electorate chooses to view things this fall with a preponderance of logic, then Obama will loose in a landslide.  It should turn out to be a classic battle between the head and the heart.

And what will determine the mood of electorate then?  My guess would be the degree of angst (created by the world situation) that is roiling the voters ... the hotter things are, the less well "coolness" will play.