Reluctant power?

Barack Obama has on occasion taken to marginalize those who accuse him of trying to turn the United States into a second-rate, cradle-to-grave welfare state in the name of currying favor with progressives both home and abroad.

Absolutely not true, the president insists.

OK. Perhaps some critics of his administration have been a bit alarmist at times, even as the White House pushes us closer to socialized medicine and the president runs around the world apologizing for what he perceives as the many wrongs America has inflicted upon other nations.

But then the president slips up and says something both revealing and profoundly troubling.

During the close of Mr. Obama's two-day nuclear summit in Washington, D.C., last week, the president was asked whether the gathering would have any effect on America's role in the Middle East peace process. Mr. Obama responded:

"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because [emphasis added] whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure."

Is Mr. Obama admitting what his critics have long feared, that he'd prefer the United States was not a world leader, but was instead a declining former power such as France or Spain?

"That's one of the more incredible statements I've heard a president make in modern times," said Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who lost to Mr. Obama in the 2008 election. "We are a dominant superpower, and we're the greatest force of good in the history of this world, and I thank God every day that we are a dominant superpower."

Indeed. Let's hope Mr. Obama's slip was just that -- and not an insight into the president's true outlook.