Is Obama Really George W. Bush? AKA Post 9/11 Reality Leans Right-Huffpo
Of all the influences on a president’s foreign policy, sometimes none can be greater than the legacy left by his predecessor. Given our tendency to personalize the presidency, we often believe that presidents create their own roles; but as Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun “the past is never over; it’s not even past.”
Nowhere is this clearer than in Barack Obama’s swift conversion to many of the policies of George W. Bush. A president who was determined to stand at the antipodes, literally at the other end of the foreign policy universe from his predecessor, has in the last two years moved into very close proximity to him on some key issues.