I guess by "aloof" he means not threatening to escalate every single conflict going on anywhere around the globe, refusing to thump your chest to show how tough you are and not prancing around in a codpiece and flightsuit on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
The "Villager gasbag" as Amato calls him, Ron Fournier was asked by the hapless Meet the Press host David Gregory for his input on the previous interviews with Sec. John Kerry and bomb thrower Sen. Lindsey Graham, and here's his response.
DAVID GREGORY: Ron, the President's response. Two visions here of how he's dealing with Russia in this moment, another crisis. How do you see it?
RON FOURNIER: Look, first of all, let's make it clear, of course Putin is a thug here. And of course it's very complicated, what's happening between Israel and Palestinians. But what we have here is a president, for better and for worse, partly reflecting the American sentiment, really has not tried to impose his will and his vision on the global community. And what we have happening here are kind of the consequences, in part, of an aloof foreign policy.
Yeah, because "imposing your will" and "vision" worked out so well for us in the past. It's not surprising coming from the man who was slipping mash notes to Karl Rove back in the day and who told everyone last year to give his buddy Bush a break: Ron Fournier: Judge George W. Bush By His Bro-Ness, Not His Horribleness:
No what has been giving Ron Fournier night terrors for the past five years is the possibility that some of his less than enlightened colleagues might look back on the legacy of one George W. Bush and see eight years of miserable and all-encompasing failure. Ron Fournier instead would like folks to focus on the real lesson of that Presidency: that W was a pretty awesome dude when you really think about it.
Now you might be sitting in a McDonald’s right now, stealing wi-fi in order to send out your 60th hopeless job application of the week while trying to forget about your underwater mortgage and the insanely high medical bills of your disabled Iraq war-veteran son. These troubles might then make you think that the 43rd President was kind of a douche. But according to Ron Fournier, your petty concerns about the “policies” or “actions” of the Bush Administration are irrelevant to understanding the inherent goodness of a man who let an entire major city drown:
As Charlie Pierce so aptly noted at the end of his piece linked above:
Ron Fournier and I don't seem to be in the same business.
No, you're not Charlie. You're really not.
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