Interesting observation on Obama: Ideological modus operandi as basis for Gunwalker . "The question is not did he approve it. Did he disapprove it?"

"I am not a crook."

Writing at National Review, Stanley Kurtz writes about Obama's decision making on Libya:

Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present.

And:

But if Obama shifts “pragmatically” between competing foreign-policy orientations, the stances themselves are intensely ideological, and almost entirely unavowed.

And:

Yet Obama has so far been reluctant to fully explain any of this to either Congress or the American public, perhaps because he realizes that the ideological basis of his actions would not be popular if openly admitted. If Obama were a different sort of president, we would have all heard about “responsibility to protect” long ago. The country would have thoroughly debated Power’s ideas, and the public would have quickly recognized the core motives of the president’s actions in Libya.

Instead, the president’s long-term goals have remained murky. He’s been impossibly vague on regime change, narrowly focused on the danger to Benghazi, and has said relatively little about the aspirations of Power and her associates to enshrine the principles and precedents of humanitarian intervention in international law.

As with health care, Obama’s talk isn’t working because he cannot afford to specify broader ideological motivations he knows the public won’t buy.

Here we see the same ideological modus operandi that formed a basis for the Gunwalker scandal. Obama has always been intensely anti-firearm. The gun confiscationist advocates like Helmke were thus puzzled when Holder was slapped down early on a new "Assault Weapons" Ban. Did Obama stop being anti-firearm? No. He just recognized it as not doable without considerable blow-back, thus he had to bide his time, puzzling friends and enemies alike.

Unless, of course, a "crisis" could be produced to shift the poll numbers and justify it politically.

This makes more sense than the two other excuses advanced to date:

a. The "Monty Melson and the Search for 'Mr. Big'" idiocy -- identified as such early on by the ATF agents themselves.

b. "'Gunwalker Bill' Newell's Excellent Rogue Foreign Policy Adventure" -- already disproved by what few documents we have.

Obama, like most men, is what he is, as well as a creature of habit. He cannot escape it. An ideological modus operandi that obtains in one part of his world view surely extends to other parts.

Viewed from Kurtz' insight, the Gunwalker scandal makes perfect sense.

And I just received this from one of my DC contacts:

Mike -- the obvious just hit me... if there's inter-agency participation in this mess, there's a coordinating agent, i.e., someone from the National Security staff at the White House making these horses pull together...

Add the foreign policy connection, and it's a "slam dunk" that the White House has had a key role...

and Obama probably did not sign off on any paper... something like USMC requests for artillery support: Silence implies consent... The question is not did he approve it. Did he disapprove it?

Yep, gittin' a bit close to The Man...