The last week seems to have been a week that the articles critical of Barack Obama have really gained a foothold. On top of the blistering (and truly funny) skit about Obama’s trip to China, we have editorials in such mega-fan sites as The New York Times pointing out that Obama is, well, human after all.
Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks. (We don’t know exactly what happened but we are told that Mr. Obama relied more on the judgment of his political advisers — specifically his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — than of his Mideast specialists.)
The Washington Post editorial board came to this conclusion in July. But suddenly, pundits who were solidly behind Obama are noticing that the emperor is not as fully clothed as they described him to be:
The peace-process bubble burst two months ago at the United Nations, when Obama’s poorly executed attempt to launch final-settlement talks between Israelis and Palestinians collapsed. Arabs who were led by Obama’s rhetoric to believe that the United States would force Israel to make unprecedented unilateral concessions — like a complete end to all construction in Jerusalem — were bitterly disappointed.
But they are not the only victims of post-Cairo letdown. Arab reformers, who for most of this decade have been trying to break down the barriers to social and political modernization in the Middle East, have also begun to conclude that the Obama administration is more likely to harm than to help them.
“All Arab countries are craving change — and many of us believed Obama was a tool for change,” says Aseel al- Awadhi, a Kuwaiti member of parliament. “Now we are losing that hope.”
Fouad Ajami, writing in the Wall Street Journal, sums it up:
Mr. Obama’s election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism. That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations, and their rulers, unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure. It predated the presidency of George W. Bush and rages on during the Obama presidency.
And he backs it up with figures.
It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitudes survey that told of America’s decline in the eyes of foreign nations. Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.
Now those surveys of 2009 bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama. In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 82% have an unfavorable view. The Obama speech in Ankara didn’t seem to help in Turkey, where the favorables are 14% and those unreconciled, 69%. In Egypt, a country that’s reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same: 27% have a favorable view of the U.S. while 70% do not. In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated: The unfavorables rose from 63% in 2008 to 68% this year.
Even Chris Matthews is losing the thrill up his leg regarding the president:
Regarding President Obama’s controversial bow to the Emperor of Japan, Matthews asked, “I have never seen a bow that low. . . . God did he have to bow that low?”
It looks like the bloom is off the rose. Certainly, with his approval ratings below fifty percent, Americans have caught on to the fact that they elected the most liberal president in history, something that pundits insisted he wouldn’t be, because he ran on a centrist platform. But the moment he was elected, the man who is one of the most liberal senators in Congress immediately took a sharp left turn. Gee, who could have seen that coming? Oh. Wait. That would be me, and everyone else who voted for his opponents.
I’ll leave you with the SNL skit from last week. Obama has become mock-worthy, and that’s the biggest sign of all that our president is now considered just another politician.