Young guns: Obama's surprisingly strong national security record owes much to a group of youthful aides few Americans have heard of.

• Author: O'Donnell, Michael
• Position: On political books - The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power - Book review

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power

by James Mann

Viking Adult, 416 pp.

Of the many surprises in President Obama's first term--accomplishing health care reform, neglecting judicial nominations, appointing Hillary Clinton secretary of state--the most interesting may be the administration's robust foreign policy. Democrats are supposed to be strong on domestic matters but weak on defense. The party seemed to have embraced that stereotype by nominating a community activist cure constitutional law professor who eats arugula salads and embraces gay marriage. Had the man even fired an assault weapon? Yet here we are, months before the November 2012 election, and we find that Republican nominee Mitt Romney strays into foreign affairs at his peril. Obama has an impressive trophy room: he tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, ended an unpopular war in Iraq, and ran a successful and limited one in Libya. Romney, by contrast, must shuffle guests into a den that mounts, at most, squirrels and rabbits. He briefly contended that anyone could have taken Obama's prize buck: even Jimmy Carter, Romney said in April, would have ordered the assault that killed bin Laden. This fatuous claim was so silly and unfounded that Obama's camp merely chuckled at it, and it went away.

Three and a half years is a long enough time to begin to generalize and draw conclusions. The Obamians, by former Los Angeles Times reporter James Mann, takes a careful look at Obama's foreign policy and the people who run it. The book follows Mann's successful 2004 study, Rise of the Vulcans, which chronicled Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and the other fearless bullies who jumped into the pool and splashed all the water right out of it. The Obamians has many strengths, although the pair of catchy titles that grace Mann's last two books suggests a weakness: shaping complex events to a simple, pithy narrative. It is a very Washington way to tell a story. The generation of Democratic foreign policy leaders that preceded the Obamians and opposed the Vulcans, Mann says, are the Trout Fishers. This is their name because they like to fish for trout during the Aspen Strategy Group conference in Colorado. Perhaps the Democrats' rising stars for 2016 will be known as the Golfers--or the Frisbee Golfers. Their opponents will break from the past and use clever methods; we will call them the Sneaky Bastards.

The cover of the book...