June 10, 2014 2:06 PM

Bearse: Stupid Stuff

From the Right: QR's conservative columnist Eric Bearse takes issue with the Obama White House on a number of foreign policy fronts, including the recent Bergdahl prisoner swap: “the people really raising questions are his fellow soldiers. They deserve answers, as do the families who lost their sons searching for him.”

“Don’t do stupid ‘stuff.’” Apparently those four words – or three of them and one expletive not suited for this family publication – are the new Obama foreign policy. Trotted out to foreign policy reporters in White House interviews, we now have reduced the nuance and complexity of foreign policy to a political bumper sticker.

Over-caffeinated minds can come up with a lot of interesting ideas, pretty much all of which should be shelved when the president speaks. Imagine the Bush 43 White House giving us “stuff happens” about those missing weapons of mass destruction. Or Clinton giving us “wag the stuff” (Clinton is still the king of the double entendre, by the way.) Reagan: “peace through stuff.”

My 10-year old daughter suggested I write about “stuffity stuff” for this column. The point is not this White House’s eternal campaign, and the need to sloganize everything – all White Houses do this – it’s that no one put down the soy latte and said let’s have an adult conversation with the American People.

What strikes me as interesting about the Obama slogan is that it indicates a run-out-the-clock, prevent defense mindset. As if we can survive the next two and a half years as long as we, “don’t do stupid stuff.” But these ideas never arise from a vacuum. They are always a reaction to something. My bet is they were reacting to Secretary of State John Kerry, when he compared the Israeli leadership to the apartheid regimes of South Africa’s recent past. You talk about stupid stuff.