Obama Going Neocon?

Robert Kagan, one of our greatest contemporary neoconservatives, was deeply impressed with President Obama's Nobel Prize speech in Oslo yesterday. He remarked:

Wow. What a shift of emphasis. Something about this Afghan decision, coupled perhaps with events in Iran, has really affected his approach.

Also noticing the neocon tendencies in the speech is Abe Greenwald, at National Review, "Going Neocon: Is Obama getting mugged by reality?" Greenwald notes the age-old formulation: "A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality." He then assesses whether the president's been "mugged," concluding:

The president has been partially mugged. Reality has accosted him and shaken him down for concessions, but it is only a temporary arrangement. Obama’s “persistence” is, for the time being, intact. That explains the contradictions contained within his war speech.

However, by invoking evil in his peace speech, he has obligated himself to a more decisive course of action and perhaps a new moral seriousness. For there is a deeper neoconservative concern that serves as the foundation upon which the architecture of democracy promotion and hawkishness are built. This is the belief in good and evil, reality’s parting gift to the mugged. Sometimes thought of as a quaint and outdated proposal, the assertion that virtue and wickedness are real is at the heart of neoconservative support for American power in the world.

Thus, the questions becomes how well will Obama live up to these obligations. I'm not confident that he will, that the president's simply responding to the polls. But at least for once we have a bit more of the kind of speech an American president should give.