On Wednesday at American University, Barack Obama made the case for the Iran nuclear agreement, and against its critics, in a long and detailed speech. The official transcript is here; the C-Span video is here. Later that afternoon, the president met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with nine journalists to talk for another 90 minutes about the thinking behind the plan, and its likely political and strategic effects.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was one of the people at that session, and he plans to write about some aspects of the discussion. Slate’s Fred Kaplan was another, and his report is here. I was there as well and will try to convey some of the texture and highlights.
Procedural note: The session was on the record, so reporters could quote everything the president said. We were allowed to take notes in real time, including typing them out on computers, but we were not allowed to use audio recorders. Direct quotes here have been checked against an internal transcript the White House made.
Nothing in the substance of Obama’s remarks would come as a surprise to people who heard his speech earlier that day or any of his comments in the weeks since the Iran deal was struck—most notably, his answers at the very long press conference he held last month. Obama made a point of this constancy. Half a dozen times, he began answers with, “As I said in the speech...” When one reporter observed that the American University address “reads like a lot of your other speeches,” Obama cut in to say jauntily, “I’m pretty consistent!,” which got a laugh.
But although the arguments are familiar, it is still different to hear them in a conversational rather than formal-oratorical setting. Here are some of the aspects that struck me.
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was one of the people at that session, and he plans to write about some aspects of the discussion. Slate’s Fred Kaplan was another, and his report is here. I was there as well and will try to convey some of the texture and highlights.Procedural note: The session was on the record, so reporters could quote everything the president said. We were allowed to take notes in real time, including typing them out on computers, but we were not allowed to use audio recorders. Direct quotes here have been checked against an internal transcript the White House made.
Nothing in the substance of Obama’s remarks would come as a surprise to people who heard his speech earlier that day or any of his comments in the weeks since the Iran deal was struck—most notably, his answers at the very long press conference he held last month. Obama made a point of this constancy. Half a dozen times, he began answers with, “As I said in the speech...” When one reporter observed that the American University address “reads like a lot of your other speeches,” Obama cut in to say jauntily, “I’m pretty consistent!,” which got a laugh.
But although the arguments are familiar, it is still different to hear them in a conversational rather than formal-oratorical setting. Here are some of the aspects that struck me.
Intellectual and Strategic Confidence
This is one micron away from the trait that Obama-detractors consider his arrogance and aloofness, so I’ll try to be precise about the way it manifested itself.
On the arguments for and against the deal, Obama rattled them off as he did in his speech and at his all-Iran July 15 press conference: You think this deal is flawed? Give me a better alternative. You think its inspection provisions are weak? Look at the facts and you’ll see that they’re more intrusive and verifiable than any other ever signed. You think because Iran’s government is extremist and anti-Semitic we shouldn’t negotiate with it? It’s because Iran has been an adversary that we need to negotiate limits, just as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with the evil and threatening Soviet Union. You think that rejecting this deal will somehow lead to a “better” deal? Well, let’s follow the logic and see why you’re wrong.
It’s the follow the logic theme I want to stress. Obama is clearly so familiar with these arguments that he was able to present them rapid-fire and as if each were a discrete paragraph in a legal brief. (At other times he spoke with great, pause-filled deliberation, marking his way through the sentence word by word.) And most paragraphs in that brief seemed to end, their arguments don’t hold up or, follow the logic or, it doesn’t make sense or, I don’t think you’ll find the weakness in my logic. You’ll see something similar if you read through his AU speech.
There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.The context for Obama’s certainty is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.
Some hardliners in Iran don’t like the agreement, as Obama frequently points out, and it has ramifications for many countries in the Middle East. But in Washington, only two blocs are actively urging the U.S. Congress to reject it. One is of course the U.S. Republican Party. The other is the Netanyahu administration in Israel plus a range of Israelis from many political parties—though some military and intelligence officials in Israel have dissented from Benjamin Netanyahu’s condemnation of the deal.
Obama has taken heat for pointing out in his speech that “every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support.” But that’s the plain truth. As delivered, this line of his speech was very noticeably stressed in the way I show:
Obama’s intellectual confidence showed through in his certainty that if people looked at the facts and logic, they would come down on his side. His strategic confidence came through in his asserting that as a matter of U.S. national interest, “this to me is not a close call—and I say that based on having made a lot of tough calls.” Most foreign-policy judgments, he said, ended up being “judgments based on percentages,” and most of them “had hair,” the in-house term for complications. Not this one, in his view:
“When I see a situation like this one, where we can achieve an objective with a unified world behind us, and we preserve our hedge against it not working out, I think it would be foolish—even tragic—for us to pass up on that opportunity.”
If you agree with the way Obama follows these facts to these conclusions, as I do, you’re impressed by his determination to fight this out on the facts (rather than saying, 2009 fashion, “We’ll listen to good ideas from all sides”). If you disagree, I can see how his Q.E.D./brainiac certainty could grate.
This is one micron away from the trait that Obama-detractors consider his arrogance and aloofness, so I’ll try to be precise about the way it manifested itself.
On the arguments for and against the deal, Obama rattled them off as he did in his speech and at his all-Iran July 15 press conference: You think this deal is flawed? Give me a better alternative. You think its inspection provisions are weak? Look at the facts and you’ll see that they’re more intrusive and verifiable than any other ever signed. You think because Iran’s government is extremist and anti-Semitic we shouldn’t negotiate with it? It’s because Iran has been an adversary that we need to negotiate limits, just as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with the evil and threatening Soviet Union. You think that rejecting this deal will somehow lead to a “better” deal? Well, let’s follow the logic and see why you’re wrong.
It’s the follow the logic theme I want to stress. Obama is clearly so familiar with these arguments that he was able to present them rapid-fire and as if each were a discrete paragraph in a legal brief. (At other times he spoke with great, pause-filled deliberation, marking his way through the sentence word by word.) And most paragraphs in that brief seemed to end, their arguments don’t hold up or, follow the logic or, it doesn’t make sense or, I don’t think you’ll find the weakness in my logic. You’ll see something similar if you read through his AU speech.
There is practically no other big strategic point on which the U.S., Russia, and China all agree—but they held together on this deal. (“I was surprised that Russia was able to compartmentalize the Iran issue, in light of the severe tensions that we have over Ukraine,” Obama said.) The French, Germans, and British stayed together too, even though they don’t always see eye-to-eye with America on nuclear issues. High-stakes measures don’t often get through the UN Security Council on a 15-0 vote; this deal did.The context for Obama’s certainty is his knowledge that in the rest of the world, this agreement is not controversial at all.
Some hardliners in Iran don’t like the agreement, as Obama frequently points out, and it has ramifications for many countries in the Middle East. But in Washington, only two blocs are actively urging the U.S. Congress to reject it. One is of course the U.S. Republican Party. The other is the Netanyahu administration in Israel plus a range of Israelis from many political parties—though some military and intelligence officials in Israel have dissented from Benjamin Netanyahu’s condemnation of the deal.
Obama has taken heat for pointing out in his speech that “every nation in the world that has commented publicly, with the exception of the Israeli government, has expressed support.” But that’s the plain truth. As delivered, this line of his speech was very noticeably stressed in the way I show:
I recognize that Prime Minister Netanyahu disagrees—disagrees strongly. I do not doubt his sincerity. But I believe he is wrong. … And as president of the United States, it would be an abrogation of my constitutional duty to act against my best judgment simply because it causes temporary friction with a dear friend and ally.To bring this back to the theme of confidence: In this conversation, as in the speech, Obama gave Netanyahu and other Israeli critics credit for being sincere but misinformed. As for the GOP? Misinformed at best. “The fact that there is a robust debate in Congress is good,” he said in our session. “The fact that the debate sometimes seems unanchored to facts is not so good. ... [We need] to return to some semblance of bipartisanship and soberness when we approach these problems.” (I finished this post while watching the Fox News GOP debate, which gave “semblance of bipartisanship and soberness” new meaning.)
Obama’s intellectual confidence showed through in his certainty that if people looked at the facts and logic, they would come down on his side. His strategic confidence came through in his asserting that as a matter of U.S. national interest, “this to me is not a close call—and I say that based on having made a lot of tough calls.” Most foreign-policy judgments, he said, ended up being “judgments based on percentages,” and most of them “had hair,” the in-house term for complications. Not this one, in his view:
“When I see a situation like this one, where we can achieve an objective with a unified world behind us, and we preserve our hedge against it not working out, I think it would be foolish—even tragic—for us to pass up on that opportunity.”
If you agree with the way Obama follows these facts to these conclusions, as I do, you’re impressed by his determination to fight this out on the facts (rather than saying, 2009 fashion, “We’ll listen to good ideas from all sides”). If you disagree, I can see how his Q.E.D./brainiac certainty could grate.
by James Fallows, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
