You must trust something and somebody. For me it's my own instincts and a president championing those instincts and brandishing focus and logic.
Soon the responsible among us will publicly devour the fine print of the Iranian agreement. Then we almost assuredly will stay with our original instincts.
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Let's be honest with ourselves: Most of us lack command of the intricacies of uranium enrichment. We possess no personal experience in verification of compliance with international agreements.
Most of us lack a background in nation-to-nation diplomacy, or even much success in household or workplace diplomacy.
Few if any of us have ever looked in the eye of an Iranian leader. Even if we had, we might have misread him in the way George W. Bush looked into the eye of, and misread, Vladimir Putin.
In the end many of us will read dutifully and attempt to think for ourselves in the matter of this negotiated arrangement with Iran reached by America and five other leading nations.
But most likely we'll end up more dependent than we'll want to admit on preconceived notions and the expressed views of others.
Maybe a couple of you will comprehend the details fully and independently, possessing innate intelligence as combined with personal experience or specialized training. Maybe you will come to an informed and objective conclusion. Good for you. May there be more of you.
Most of us will read dutifully, ponder thoughtfully and find ourselves ultimately influenced by those original conceptual instincts. Some call those biases.
Those instinctive concepts will guide us in what we choose from the menu of others' supposedly expert opinions, which often will amount to political talking points.
If you don't like Barack Obama and conceptually oppose dealing with or tolerating bad people, and if you prefer isolating or fighting bad people, then you most likely will declare this deal fatally flawed in its particulars. That's because you'll want it to be fatally flawed in its particulars.
If you like and trust and admire Obama, and if you are inclined to think that attempts at engagement and negotiated agreements ought to trump war whenever possible, then you most likely will declare this deal solid enough in its particulars. That's because you'll want it to be solid enough in its particulars.
So in a way U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton is the most honest Obama critic of all. He didn't need to wait a millisecond, or to read a word.
He conceptually opposes engagement with people we don't like. He conceptually embraces intolerance and belligerence.
His policy is testosterone.
Conversely, some of us instinctively and conceptually prefer attempts at compromise over belligerence, all the while understanding the risk, which is great. Just as the risk of belligerence is great.
We compromisers might turn out to be Neville Chamberlain, eternally shamed appeaser.
We might turn out to be Colin Powell, spewing as if truth the utter nonsense the president has told us, and coming to live regretfully in a more dangerous world.
We might turn out to be John F. Kennedy, lectured in 1961 by Nikita Khrushchev and then showing the Russian who is boss in 1963.
We might turn out to be Richard Nixon, historically acclaimed for going to China.
We might turn out to be Ronald Reagan, saying "trust, but verify" in compromising with an "evil empire," and looking pretty good through ensuing events.
What I like is a president who vigorously accounts for his exercise of instincts and concepts that I share, and who does so unwaveringly in the face of detraction and even ridicule.
That's precisely what Obama did Tuesday in an interview with Tom Friedman of the New York Times.
Obama lavished logic on his conversation with Friedman. He spoke with clarity and command, explaining that he's seeking not an inch more than to make a deal by which Iran can't develop nuclear weaponry for 10 or 15 years.
Transforming Iran into a good guy--that wasn't on the table, he said. It is, he explained, a long-term vision that could happen only from several factors working internally and externally and incrementally and spontaneously.
I'm a fan of that kind of narrowly focused logic, of setting a desirable, seemingly attainable and non-utopian goal, then obsessing on it.
I like what the football coach, Jimmy Johnson, once said. It was that he looked at the world as ending every Sunday night because he never thought of Mondays--of any world existing beyond the next Dallas Cowboys' football game.
I like a president who will apply that kind of laser to an imperfect increment to keep a rogue nation from having a nuke for a decade or so.
Whether that nation starts to turn less rogue--that's a question for Monday, and the world we're talking about ends Sunday.
John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 07/19/2015