With a growing number of people losing confidence in President Obama’s foreign policy, political satirist Jon Stewart used his Comedy Central program “The Daily Show” to underscore that Obama’s response is at worst the same as President Reagan’s was decades ago. It needs to be pointed out that Stewart, in defending President Obama’s seeming indifference to the crisis by citing Reagan’s responses to similar situations, is in effect coping the same defense President Richard Nixon used during the Watergate Scandal.
President Nixon attempted to declassify documents to show the American public that his involvement in Watergate was mild compared to what past presidents had done. Democrats successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to block Nixon’s attempted declassification of documents leaving him to appear criminal in the minds of most Americans.
Now, Stewart is using Reagan’s response to the Soviet Union shooting down a (South) Korean airline flight, which killed all 269 passengers of whom 53 were Americans including Congressman Larry McDonald, to paint Obama’s reaction as preferable. Reagan cut his vacation short, but only after his aides insisted. His own journal entry indicates he was more upset about missing the last days of his vacation than he was about the loss of life.
Stewart also brought up the fact that, under Reagan’s watch, the US Navy shot down an Iranian airliner and in the aftermath, the ship’s captain received a Silver Star. The trouble with Stewart’s defense is that is still doesn’t make Obama appear strong. All it does is underscore he too may be a hypocrite and a “goofball” like one of his predecessors.