Maybe I’m just used to hearing President Bush talk about Iraq all the time, but it seems like President Obama has been awfully quiet about Iraq’s provincial elections.
To recap, on Saturday Iraq undertook what have to be considered spectacularly violence-free elections for provincial councils across the country. Prime Minister Maliki, once written off by Washington nabobs and even urged to quit by Carl Levin, gained substantial traction after his party won a majority of the vote in most provinces where ballots were cast.
In supporting Maliki’s party, the Iraqi people apparently affirmed their support for his cooperation with the U.S. and rejected harder line religious parties.
U.S. forces stood ready to provide assistance to Iraq’s security forces if trouble arose, but thankfully they were largely uninvolved.
By any measure this is a success for Iraq and for the U.S. engagement in Iraq. The Washington Post called the elections “a political triumph.”
Yet President Obama issued a bland statement congratulating Iraqis for a “significant … step forward.” He referenced the elections only briefly in a pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer. And when Brian Williams asked the president this week about changing policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama didn’t even bring up the elections.
I understand President Obama has a lot on his mind, what with the economy springing new job leaks every other day. But the presidency requires multi-tasking, something the blackberry-addicted Obama knows how to do.
Since the Iraqi elections occurred, the president has signed a children’s health bill, read to a second-grade class, got the ball rolling on his faith-based initiative, and visited the Department of Energy to announce “new efficiency standards for common household appliances.”
And still no speech about Iraq’s elections. No statement from behind a podium. What gives?
One of the ways a president sets priorities is by talking about things that are important to him. Exhibit A: The stimulus bill, which gets mentioned every day.
Surely the president doesn’t think energy-efficient dishwashers are more important than successful elections in Iraq. He should make that clearer.
