Sunday, September 20, 2009

Seeping Away

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk
Admittedly, the presidential to-do list is terrifying. The economy requires
his full-time attention. So does health-care reform. And climate change.
Indeed, he deserves praise for spending so much time on thankless foreign
policy issues. He is tackling all the big problems: restarting Middle East
peace talks, defanging Iran and North Korea and a "reset" of
relations with Russia. But none of them are working.


Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and
carry on as before. The picture emerging from the White House is a
disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say
he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.

The President's domestic critics who accuse him of being the sinister wielder
of a socialist master-plan are wide of the mark. The man who has run nothing
more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out
of his depth in the world's top job. His credibility is seeping away