Pundits Say Presidents Who Won T Lead The Country Into War Have Trouble Leading It Anywhere

• NOEL CELIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
• Obama catches flak for keeping troops home.

Articles in Tuesday’s Tribune and New York Times dwell on President Obama’s troubles defending a nonbellicose foreign policy, with the Times saying that the president, while visiting the Philippines, “lashed out at those he said reflexively call for the use of force.” The Times described Obama as “visibly frustrated” as he complained that his critics “had failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war.”

Historians—and the rest of us looking back—who want to cut Johnson some slack say he never did figure out how to move. Maybe the worldlier Kennedy would have known what to do—Kennedy, who thanks to the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis had taken the measure of the same Pentagon brass that would cow Johnson. Kennedy might have walked away from war. But all Johnson could do was wade in deeper and deeper.