Barack Obama is doing so badly at foreign policy, at dealing with the economy and at running an administration that predictions that he may be “the next Carter” are sounding optimistic.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to neutralizing his competition, he shows he’s learned something from all his years in Chicago:<\/a><\/p>\n Keep your friends close\u2014and the competition closer. There has been a buzz about Petraeus and the presidency since about the fall of last year<\/a>, and to many in the Republican Party\u2014a party bereft of ideas and credible leaders\u2014the general has increasingly taken on the aspect of a possible messiah. His impeccable military credentials, his undoubted intelligence, his mastery of personal and professional politics (you wouldn\u2019t catch him talking to Rolling Stone<\/a> in a million years), plus his undoubted (if carefully tailored) conservatism have led many to see in him a man who can take on Obama in 2012, and beat him. He is even the sort of guy who\u2019d allow the GOP to broaden its tent, drawing in \u201cundecideds\u201d and independents.<\/p>\n This can no longer happen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Gotta hand it to the President.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barack Obama is doing so badly at foreign policy, at dealing with the economy and at running an administration that predictions that he may be “the next Carter” are sounding optimistic. But when it comes to neutralizing his competition, he shows he’s learned something from all his years in Chicago: Keep your friends close\u2014and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11583,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11582\/revisions\/11583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}