The strange serenity of Barack Obama

There is, of course, plenty of room to criticize Obama’s Serenity-ism. During the “fiscal cliff” negotiations of late 2012, for instance, liberals argued that Obama had more control over the situation than he realized and failed to extract maximal concessions from Republicans. Similarly, in the foreign policy arena, conservatives have argued that Obama far too passively watched Vladimir Putin move to reconsolidate the periphery of the old Soviet Union and the Middle East as it deteriorated into chaos.

And — to return to the angst-making present — why didn’t he do more to deter or punish Russian hacking?

The clue to Obama’s thinking can be found in the Serenity Prayer principle. In his press conference last Friday, Obama seemed angrier at the national news media than he was at Putin. “I am finding [it] a little curious that everyone is acting surprised that this looked like it was disadvantaging Hillary Clinton,” he said, “because you guys wrote about it every day. Every single leak about every little juicy tidbit of political gossip, including John Podesta’s risotto recipe. This was an obsession that dominated the news coverage.”

Translation: We cannot control, we can only respond to, the behavior of a foreign adversary. But the amplification of Putin’s obvious hackery by the media was entirely in our control.