Obama Lost Stature, Relatively Unsuccessful, A Lot Like Jimmy Carter, Ain't No Pacific President

The First Pacific President who isn't, Barack Obama, has been deemed "nowhere on the world stage" by our German friends.

David Axelrod whined to the press that the "public's expectations had been too high." "Expectations too high" - echos throughout the world. Damage control for Barack Obama: Expectations too high - December 2008!,Expectations too high - January 2009!  Expectations too high - February 2009!  Expectations so high - March 2009! Expectations too high - June 2009! Expectations too high - October 2009! This list could go on an on, and just for the record, most of us red-blooded Americans out here are getting exactly what we expected out of Barack Obama. See a Charles Krauthammer video below explaining the "first Pacific President," and why Obama is not "it."

The following from der Spiegel Online:

The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.

 "Lost Some Stature:"

Obama's currency isn't as strong as he had believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate the world of realpolitik.

 "Relatively Unsuccessful:"

When former President Bill Clinton went to China in June 1998, Beijing wanted to impress the Americans. A press conference in the Great Hall of the People, broadcast on television as a 70-minute live discussion, became a sensation the world over. 

America should clean up its government finances, and the weak dollar is unacceptable, the head of the Chinese banking authority said, just as Obama's plane was about to land.

Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere, with even friends like Israel leaving him high and dry. For the government of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace is only conceivable under its terms. Netanyahu has rejected Obama's call for a complete moratorium on the construction of settlements. As a result, Obama has nothing to offer the Palestinians and the Syrians. "We thought we had some leverage," says Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under the Clinton administration and now an advisor to Obama. "But that proved to be an illusion."

 Even the president seems to have lost his faith in a genial foreign policy. The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong emphasis on civilian reconstruction, is already being changed. "We're searching for an exit strategy," said a staff member with the National Security Council on the sidelines of the Asia trip.

"A Lot Like Jimmy Carter:"

An end to diplomacy is also taking shape in Washington's policy toward Tehran. It is now up to Iran, Obama said, to convince the world that its nuclear power is peaceful....This puts the president, in his tenth month in office, where Bush began -- with threats. "Time is running out," Obama said in Korea. It was the same phrase Bush used against former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, shortly before he sent in the bombers....

Prominent Republicans have already tried to liken Obama to the humanitarian from Georgia, who lost in his bid to win a second term, because voters felt that he was too soft. "Carter tried weakness and the world got tougher and tougher because the predators, the aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators, when they sense weakness, they all start pushing ahead," Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker in the House of Representatives, recently said. And then he added: "This does look a lot like Jimmy

The world is beginning to get it.


Charles Krauthammer: Obama not the first Pacific President(video)