The President bows

THE PRESIDENCY: As the President’s polling numbers keep slipping, there is new attention being paid to his foreign policy acumen. The repeated postponement of his Afghanistan decision and the poor reviews of his recent trip to Asia (and grand bow to the Emperor of Japan) are drawing parallels to Jimmy Carter – a devastating commentary on an administration not yet a year old.

The latest Rasmussen daily Tracking Poll shows that only 27% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) strongly disapprove -- giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of minus 15, his lowest approval rating to date. Fifty-two percent (52%) of Democrats strongly approve while 68% of Republicans strongly disapprove. Among the key independent swing vote, just 16% strongly approve and 51% strongly disapprove.

More alarmingly, 45% now want the U.S. to pull out of Afghanistan, either right away or within a year. That makes the President’s decision to “finish the job” by sending in 34,000 more troops that much more difficult to carry out -- having waited for months to make any decision at all. Had he acted immediately after his generals recommended just such a surge strategy that succeeded in Iraq several months ago, he might not have allowed this new public ambivalence to set in so deeply.

BELEAGUERED: Already beleaguered on his domestic agenda, with 53% saying they are worried that the federal government will do too much when it comes to reacting to the nation’s financial problems, and support for his signature policy initiative of health care reform falling as low as 38%, a lack of support and confidence in his leadership in international affairs could be very damaging.

The President’s recent trip to Asia, with much publicized stops in Japan, China and South Korea, was widely panned as so paltry in substance as having not been worth his time. Leslie Gelb. A former State Department official and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, says the trip, “along with the clumsy review of Afghan policy and the fumbling of Mideast negotiations suggests a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power.” He adds that, “The message for Mr. Obama should be clear: He should stare hard at the skills of his foreign-policy team and, more so, at his own dominant role in decision-making. Something is awry somewhere, and he’s got to fix it.”

NO DELIVERABLES: Many analysts share Gelb’s view that despite the administration’s attempt to downplay “deliverables” on the trip, and to paint the journey as a recognition of Asia’s new importance and America’s desire for a new co-operative spirit, that hardly justified the almost two weeks of the president’s time. Given the tanking economy, health-care reform woes and the important decisions to be made on Afghanistan, he obviously had other things to do. Presidents take trips like this one only when they need breakthroughs and accomplishments on certain issues that can’t be agreed on without the pressure of an impending presidential visit, they say.

Most past presidents wouldn’t even commit to trips abroad without knowing that key deals would be finally agreed on and announced during the visit itself. The prospective visit is the power lever used to nail down the deals, as it was applied by Henry Kissinger for Richard Nixon, George Shultz for Ronald Reagan, James Baker for George H. W. Bush, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright for Bill Clinton, and Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice for George W. Bush.

THORNY ISSUES: There were tangible objectives to be pursued in Asia. Obama’s travels were a chance to make progress on thorny issues like greenhouse-gas emissions, and the fate of U.S. bases on Okinawa, which the new Japanese government insists on moving. It was time to announce ways to gain fixes on the U.S.-South Korean trade treaty, long stalled in Congress. It was a moment to show that Beijing would actually make some mutually beneficial compromises on exchange rates or economic sanctions against Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

But absent guarantees of progress on issues such as these, of which there was little or nothing concrete to be pointed to following his trek through Asia, many felt Obama should have instead just taken a vacation in Hawaii. The President won no concessions anywhere he went, and instead suffered lectures from the Japanese about U.S. military bases there to defend them; the Chinese about the dollar when their new found wealth is the direct result of liberal American trade policies; and the Koreans for not standing up strongly enough against their belligerent cousins in the North.

POOR OPTICS: Matters were made worse by events on the tarmac. It was not good optics for Obama to inexplicably bow to Japan’s emperor – as he did before the Saudi King some months ago. Time and again, the Internet ran clips of officials from Finland to New Zealand shaking hands with the same leaders and pointedly not bowing to either. At his joint appearances in Asia, Obama looked more like a dutiful student attending a seminar, than the leader of the free world and still most powerful country on earth.

Gelb notes that the White House might try to blame the State Department or the National Security Council for the missteps, but regional experts in both groups clearly understood the shortfalls of the decision to go ahead with the journey – raising serious doubts about the administration’s decision-making machinery. The West Wing seems to be continually re-running the last election campaign.

BLOW BACK: Trips and photo ops are being used to excess, to drum up popular support for the President, with little attention seemingly being given to any matters of policy or substance. That can have a serious blow-back affect, and in foreign policy that can lead to life and death results. While Jimmy Carter was contemplating the philosophical importance of the Shah of Iran’s domestic policies, he allowed hundreds of American diplomats to be held hostage for hundreds of days as a result. His inaction also led to the Islamic revolution and the nuclear standoff with Iran that exists today.

When he entered office, Obama said that he wanted to listen to the world, promising respect instead of arrogance. But these recent events indicate that Obama's currency isn't as strong as he believed. Everyone wants respect, but hardly anyone is willing to pay for it. Interests, not emotions, dominate international relations. The Asia trip revealed the limits of Washington's new foreign policy: Although Obama did not lose face in China and Japan he did appear to have lost some of his initial stature.

UNSUCCESSFUL: Obama's new foreign policy has also been relatively unsuccessful elsewhere, even with friends like Israel. 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.

The approach that was being used in Afghanistan this spring, with its strong emphasis on civilian reconstruction, has also yielded almost no results. The recent elections were so corrupt that even Obama felt compelled to comment about it. And that policy has already changed with the troop increase, even as aides say, “We're searching for an exit strategy." Obama ran his campaign decrying the Iraq war as a failure, and claiming Afghanistan had to be the priority. Now Iraq is a success as he sinks deeper into an Afghan quagmire.

CONSEQUNCES: 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. While in Asia, Obama mentioned "consequences" unless it followed his advice. 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.

There are some indications that even Obama is beginning to realize that his foreign policy may sound great, but is going nowhere fast (the conclusion of such disparate voices as the British and the German press). Brazil is cozying up to Iran; Venezuela’s Chavez belittles Obama, even after the President accepted responsibility for everything bad that has ever happened to the Southern Hemisphere; only Fidel Castro remains a fan. The White House may finally be realizing that it will have to take a tougher stance sooner or later, or keep getting ridiculed.

PREDATORS: Obama's advisors admit they fear the comparison with Jimmy Carter, even more than with Bush. Prominent Republicans are already likening 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 of the House recently said; adding, "This does look a lot like Jimmy Carter."

And none of this takes into account the question of Obama’s determination to hold the terrorist trials in New York – which less than 20% of Americans support. That is tantamount to casting Osama bin Laden in a one-man dialogue show on Broadway, and turning the 42nd St. electronic billboards in Times Square over to al Qaeda for free public service 24-hour broadcasts. Barack “Hussein” Obama, may soon find himself haunted by a much larger political unease than any generated by a “killer rabbit.”