Yesterday I mentioned that I thought our presidents tend to make things up to hide: (a) their inability to resist overseas involvement and (b) their long track record of failure in overseas involvement. Since I wrote the media has been carrying a piece that suggests that what I called fantasizing is endemic in the conduct of both foreign and military policy. The story I refer to is quoting the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, as saying that the security situation in Afghanistan is no longer deteriorating.

Now, that surely contradicts the information available to the public on "Google News," which shows U.S. and NATO troops being killed all over the country, schools being blown up, the Taleban controlling significant chunks of territory, and no more than partial security in Kabul. But let us say that the media is 100 percent incorrect. One still has to wonder what McChrystal is talking about. Not long ago he asked for 40,000 additional troops to prevent defeat in Afghanistan; there were rumors at the time that he actually wanted 80,000.

Obama gave him 30,000, and as best I can tell from doing some hasty research this morning about one-fifth (6,000) of those troops have arrived in Afghanistan. The common wisdom is that only 1 of 3 of U.S. troops are shooters, reducing that 6,000 number to 2,000 new bayonets to carry the war to the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

So, are we to believe that 2,000 new combat troops have reversed the deterioration toward defeat that McChrystal warned us not that many months ago could not be stopped with less than 40,00 new troops? Was he -- and all those who supported the 30,00-troop increase -- deceiving us then? Or are they deceiving us now, so that the losing Afghan war can be positively spun through the mid-term elections? Are McChrystal and all those involved in Afghan decision-making stupid? Are they liars? Or are well simply the fools they regard us as?

I would not say Obama is weak. I think the the correct adjective is "fantasist." Like his three immediate predecessors, he is an unrepentant interventionist who presses ahead with already lost overseas adventures and tries to insulate them by dreaming things up to hide reality from the electorate that is paying for them in taxes and the lives of their soldier-children. On our non-war with Islam, here are just a few of the recent howlers from Obama's administration: (a) there are moderates in the Taleban --up to 80 percent -- who will come to our side for cash and a job; (b) bin Laden is desparate and irrelevant but he is certain to launch a major attack on CONUS in 3-to-6 months; (c) we can exploit the split (?) between the Taleban and al-Qaeda; (d) the Saudis will help Karzai to acheive a settlement acceptable to the U.S. and NATO; (e) Pakistan will help us defeat the Taleban and al-Qaeda for the $3 billion we are forking over to the thief Zadari; and (f) more U.S. money for Yemen will allow its government to defeat al-Qaeda. Weak can be coped with; fantasies and/or stupidity pose a higher hurdle.

I do think that Obama’s political setbacks will have some impact on his foreign policy. One example: the emphasis on jobs means that the administration likely to push China hard to let its currency appreciate.

Another example: In its new populist garb, the Obama administration may be less willing to push in Congress for new free-trade agreements.

Yes, Obama will probably focus primarily on domestic economic issues, at least until November, and the State of the Union was a fair indicator of that reality. But I don’t agree that by doing so, Obama is in some way contradicting the pattern in which presidents like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton turned their energies from domestic to foreign policy. Clinton shifted after the Republicans took control of Congress; Nixon stuck to foreign policy when he had lost domestic support. By contrast, in Obama’s case, he’s emphasizing domestic policy now precisely because he hopes to keep and shore up congressional and public support. If in November the Democrats were to lose huge number of seats, or control of Congress, then we might afterwards see Obama decide to devote his energies to foreign policy in much the fashion of Nixon or Clinton.

Are there opportunities for major triumphs abroad that would improve Obama’s standing at home? I can’t see how a new arms-control agreement with Russia would help (or hurt) him much in the polls. The Mideast? I doubt it. Bill Clinton managed to get Arafat and Rabin to shake hands at the White House in 1993 -- and the Republicans won Congress the following year. I suppose the Chinese could help Obama a lot, if they were to open the way for, say, a 40 per cent revaluation of their currency – but there’s no sign they’re going to do that.

There is one event overseas that would certainly change all the political dynamics for Obama and his administration: finding and killing Osama Bin Laden. The Republican portrayals of Obama as a failure or as a weak president would instantly cease or ring hollow.

The conventional wisdom has it that presidents can help their domestic standing with a major diplomatic achievement, such as Nixon’s trip to China. But it’s worth noting that Nixon himself didn’t believe this; he was more cynical and calculating.

A couple of years ago, in researching a book on Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, I found the unpublished notes, kept by Nixon himself, of a secret 1987 meeting he had at the White House with Reagan. At the time, Nixon was trying to persuade Reagan to slow down in his diplomacy with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Here’s what Nixon told Reagan, by his own chilling account:

“I pointed out that many people felt my popularity had gone up because of my trip to China. In fact, it had improved only slightly. What really sent it up was the bombing and mining of Haiphong.”

That’s chilling, right? And it’s also a reminder that presidents can’t let the polls determine their foreign policies.

Thanks to all contributors to this round. The premise of the original question is that Obama’s domestic political weakness poses difficulties for his handling of foreign policy. As the week winds down, I’d like to focus on a push back against this premise on the part of some bloggers. “Remember, if you will,” Joseph Collin notes, “the alleged weakness of Pres. Clinton who suffered an unprecedented beating in his first mid-term elections. He later proved two things: 1) that a President can accomplish a lot with a Congress controlled by the other party, and 2) success in foreign and national security policy comes to those presidents who learn the most and the fastest.”

One possibility is that a weakened Obama will prove a tougher Obama on the world stage—in a determination to prove, Nixon like, that whatever his standing at home, he will not be stopped from carrying out an aggressive foreign policy abroad. This could have implications for Obama’s handling of the war in the ‘AfPak’ region, in a parallel to Nixon’s handling of the conflict in Vietnam.

Does anyone want to chime in on the prospect of a tougher Obama, despite (or because of) lagging poll numbers?

I join with my fellow bloggers who object to the alleged weakness of the President. President Obama is clearly down, but definitely not out.

Remember, if you will, the alleged weakness of Pres. Clinton who suffered an unprecedeted beating in his first mid-term elections. He later proved two things: 1) that a President can accomplish a lot with a Congress controlled by the other party, and 2) success in foreign and national security policy comes to those presidents who learn the most and the fastest.

Amdist the greatest weakness of his second term, the affair Lewinsky, President Clinton effectively used force against Iraq. It takes a lot to turn a President into a tied Gulliver, and Obama's latest jab at China over arms sales to Taiwan suggests that he has many a move still in him.

All that said, year one of the Obama presidency has not had any great triumphs. Sadly, the President's new openness and engagement policy has netted him nothing with China, Russia, or Iran. He has not made much progress in the Israel-Palestine issue, and nuclear proliferation, state support for terrorism, and violent non-state actors continue apace. Hard boiled realists still admire the changes that he has made in our image abroad, but so far, no great victories have come from people liking us more.

Interestingly, President Obama's best speech (the Nobel acceptance) and his most decisive foreign policy move (the reinforcement in Afghanistan) have both met with broad international acceptance and applause from the nation's right wing. There's a message in there somewhere.

Weak is it? So how does weakness stack up? Contrary to all buzz and spin this President has sustained almost perfect continuity with the preceding sacred king. There are some franchise-branding shifts, but not many — So is there some new “weakness” here?

• Diplomacy: He is just as weak an Emperor W dealing with Israel, if for slightly different reasons. Just as weak too with Iran: The past administration fulfilled that tyranny’s every Basij Safavid dream in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while rattling a plastic light saber. This leadership has simply picked up the toy saber, put in new batteries, and offered to put it away if Iran would only just submit.

• Strategic position: Is it not just as weak? Like the former White House, does this one not stroke the Shi’a Republic of Iraq so we can leave under a spin-zone of “victory?” Does it not plead with our partner in cesspool corruption — he of the Karakul hat — to give us a comparably spinnable “outcome in Afghanistan? Moreover, as a sentiment never to be voiced we continue, like a blind heiress bankrolling criminal grandchildren, to feed and stroke the worst Muslim tyrannies, all the while professing “I know nothing, nothing!”

• Military balance: Are we not just as “strong” now as before, are we not the Superpower? Yet are we not as well just as existentially weak? Are we not still tracked into self-defeating behavior on the battlefield? The British Army of Sir Henry Clinton was the best trained, best equipped, and best led professional military of the later 18th century. But with 30,000 men in New York, enough to destroy the Continentals, he controlled no more than the close-in suburbs of today’s Metro area. Meanwhile in the Carolinas, the more “security” Cornwallis brought “the population” the angrier colonials became and the harder they fought back. Sir Henry Clinton did not have enough men to subdue us — nor do we today. Our “superpower” has shown the world its inability to subdue two medium-sized societies. Our former regime revealed this to all. Why would the succeeding regime choose to reflexively enhance this melancholy insight?

• Policy: The former regime worked hard to weaken the NATO alliance, just as it caved to China again and again. Just as it slapped Pakistan to court India. Just as it pricked Russia by establishing US satrapies that it demonstrated it would never defend (like Georgia). Just as it picked winners in Iraq (Shi’a and Kurds) while also creating an historical forever-loser, thus cementing strife in Britain’s League of Nations Mandate that will likely snake into the decades ahead. So talking of “weakness,” how has this new court in Washington done any worse?

• Intelligence: “Intelligence?” After an Iliadic nine years of war we are still asking the same questions: Why do they hate us? What are the “roots of Muslim rage?” We have no grasp of what is going on in the world of Islam. I wrote this in 2002 (http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/library/terrormask.htm) yet it is as irrelevant to the conversation among us, about them, as it was then. When referencing 18th century Brits remember: We are worse. They got their cultural framing approximately right; their disagreement was over what to do. We still have our framing horribly wrong, and we just want to do. Julia’s recipe for “the long defeat.” Tragically after the Cairo speech in June, this team simply ditched its own insights, and bowed to forever-entrenched Imperial City imperatives.

• Communications: It is not simply that we are poor at making our case: We want to make the case, not to vociferously alleged recipients, but to ourselves. What we call “strategic communication” once had a kind of integrity as “propaganda” but is now simply a form of domestic political spin looping back to the home audience while pretending to change “hearts and minds.” Take a look at what you the citizen, fund. Our propaganda pushes a submission to the American way of life and implicitly to the tenets of American religious nationalism. It is no wonder that Muslims recoil at our ham-handed attempt at conversion. Hence the market video squibs that might float in Kansas City but surely bomb in Karachi. Changing how we talk might have been the biggest difference between this president and the “before king.” In his Cairo speech he seemed poised to make a difference. But rather than a triumphant follow-through the vision was garroted.

• Authority: Impressions of strength and weakness all come down to an elusive collective sensation: “Authority.” Remember too that there is authority with Them and authority among Us. How loud the trumpets’ sound when this president ascended! In a vocal instant we felt strong and true and good again — and humankind beamed in admiration. We were loved again. While our former Dear Leader literally slew American authority with friends and allies, our new president renewed standing in an instant.

So how did he lose it? This president promised to be stronger that his predecessor but in fact has become weaker overall. Why is this?

All Americans — both his flock and his sworn enemies — share a desire for the sacred king to raise-up the chalice of American sacred narrative. Even though political opponents are loathe to admit it, they want him to be El Cid or Ben-Hur, which is to say, Charlton Heston fulfilling our Cinemascope vision of American identity, literally in the embodiment of a great leader.

All the angles on American strength and weakness point to a new president who put too little into how he would raise that chalice (what a predecessor once called “the vision thing”) and too much into standard executive ritual.

In part this meant approving and then pursuing the weak course of the last administration. Yet more critically his pursuit of standard executive ritual toward the world has in this sense makes him much weaker than the old king:

He has failed to wrest the sacred narrative from the Republican Party. As a result he looks weak in the eyes of both conservative and liberal battalions.

He looks weak to Republicans because he does just what they say when it comes to war (meaning right now, submissively doubling-down in Afghanistan). He is their patsy — to generals and neocons alike — and this supine visual statement (at West Point especially) lets them flagrantly usher-in the Carter specter.

He looks just as weak to Democrats because he has — or sure looks like — he has abandoned promises and principles — upon which all political authority abides. It simply does not matter that he is pulling out of Iraq. That was yesterday’s buzz.

Most important, he cannot face up to the simple, existential truth that Republicans now own the American sacred narrative — and that they have since Reagan. He simply submits, and thus with every gesture and public flourish he reaffirms their right to own it.

He is being invidiously compared to Jimmy Carter. But to my mind Carter was a pretty damned good president: He tried to deal with Iran with a “Where Eagles Dare” Heroes of Telemark operation. It was the military that was not up to it. Harold Brown was an exceptional Secretary of Defense, and we kept the pressure on the Soviets, no matter what Republican lore tells us now. Moreover the appointment of and support for Paul Volcker set up the eventual recovery to come. Finally, Carter recognized the need to take a long view, as his “Global 2000 Report” and alternative energy initiatives show. Our today ratifies his prescience.

Yet look at his place now in our demotic “history.” Carter surely failed (“surely,” because history is written by the victors). But why did he fail? Because he blew the most existentially important thing for America’s sacred king, which is:

Living Authority

For him, owning authority means living authority. The urgent challenge for this president is to reclaim personal world-authority — and specifically that means wresting away from Republicans their ownership claim on the American sacred narrative, which they declared nightly: That only a Republican Sacred King has the auctoritas to lead America … and humankind.

What Chinese and Russians and Iranians or anyone else actually does matters less than how our leader stands up and responds. In this sense “others” represent mere specters in today’s folkloric national narrative. They exist to offer him tests of American strength. They are symbolic trials where the person of the President collectively represents us: He is our American Champion. Like all champions of ancient myth, he too must triumph in martial contest. Here American sacred narrative diverges not at all from say, the Iliad — hence the deeper American allegory in both Ben Hur and El Cid, where Heston, all-American, bests evil Romans and Muslims (and bad Christians!) in core “champion” scenes. The American president must succeed in the manner of Achilles or Alexander (Did not Reagan bring down the evil empire? Prodigious!)

Hence what transcendence attends victory! Success unleashes feelings of strength. “Victory” answers the eternal question embedded in sacred narrative: Is America still great, or are we in decline? Are we still “a shining city upon a hill”? Is it still true that “our best days are ahead of us”?

The heavy burden on the American president is this collective charge of national embodiment, and even more, the weight of our shared dread: That the sacred king we have anointed will fail, that his supernatural endowment will not be enough.

Long ago Democrats understood this mystical relationship between President and People, but left it by the wayside during their time of dominance. Reagan seized it for Republicans, and they will not let go. For Barack Obama, reclaiming sacred authority — becoming the American Champion — is the central mystery of his presidency.

Yes, it is a horrible cliche, but I don't believe that the president will rely on a major foreign policy initiative to turn around his political fortunes. He has many things on his plate right now, as noted, he spent just nine minutes on foreign policy in the SOTU, and the American people have clearly signaled a desire to focus on problems here at home.

I'm not entirely happy with this turn of events. I think the country's turn inward -- in the form of trade protectionism, nativism, and anti-immigrant sentiment -- is particularly worrisome. But the wise course for those in Washington is to come up with a foreign policy that can be sustained with a modicum of popular support. They should find a way for us to be engaged in the world without being in charge of it.

So far, I see no evidence of a change away from the assumptions that have guided U.S. foreign policy through four post-Cold War administrations, two Republican and two Democrat (plus GHW Bush for part of his term). The just released QDR repeats many of the same mantras about U.S. power as a global public good that we've heard for years.

Up to now, the practice has been to distort and confuse the purpose of U.S. foreign policy. The policy elite in Washington and New York know that the public expects the U.S. military to be used to advance American security, when in fact much of what it does underwrites the security of others. As Michael Mandelbaum wrote several years ago, “To make sacrifices largely for the benefit of others counts as charity, and for Americans, as for other people, charity begins at home.”

Obama and his team, and probably his successor, might manage to sustain the dominant posture for a while longer. Other countries have no great desire to assume responsibilities for their own defense, or for policing their respective regions.

But at the end of the day, all politics is local. Americans can't be expected to care more about things that occur 8,000 miles from our shores than they do about things in the Gulf of Mexico, or in New Mexico. In an era of crushing fiscal imbalance, and an increasingly complex international environment, now presents a great opportunity to revisit some of the core assumptions of the past two decades and ask -- is this where we want to be 20 years from now, with the U.S. military still the world's policeman, and with the rest of the world anxious, querulous and resentful when we use that power, or even when we don't?

If we choose to make a change, even a modest change in the direction of greater burden sharing with allies who have grown too comfortable under the U.S. security umbrella, we might look back on this period fondly. If we don't, we are likely to see it as a missed opportunity.

One should not look at the numbers of minutes in a state of the union speech to gather conclusions about an administration’s actual priorities. The national security machine of the US works 24-7 and it was working through the President’s speech.

His focus on jobs during the speech is an obvious one: unemployment is high and it expected to be high, even from White House projections, for some time to come. The American people are worried about their jobs and their economic futures. No matter what the President says and no matter what he and Congress say they are going to do not much is going to happen on this front before the next set of elections, which start in a few months, and the other near term to medium term elections. It could be that little could be done even up to the 2012 election cycles and for some time beyond. The financial fiasco of the last few years has damaged the US economy and I expect another dip.

I am sure the smart folks in the White House and the Congress can see this fragility as well. President Obama is at risk of being a one-term president even if the reasons for the economic debacle were caused in time periods prior to his taking office. The lax regulation and the turning of blind eyes to financial and other shenanigans was not his doing. Bernard Madoff made his impacts on the markets well before Inauguration Day. Lehman Brothers went down due to things that happened well before he took office. It went into bankruptcy in 2008, not 2009. The AIG bailout happened prior to President Obama’s taking his oath of office. The collapse of the housing market happened because of financial venality combined with financial ignorance and irrationality that was virulent in weakly controlled mortgage and other markets. Barak Obama was a Senator when all of this was brewing.

The Obama team’s economic recovery policies have not been what many expect and the reaction of the economy to them has been not exactly stellar, but they have tried in trying circumstances. Monetary policy has been limited by pretty much starting his term with close to 0 percent interest rates. Fiscal policy has been limited by the fears of the debt, deficits, and the looming inflation and even stagflation that may happen after a few months or years. The debt of the country is growing at a worrying pace. Deficit spending is clearly not at logical levels for a long run recovery.

But given the circumstances what were the alternatives? Would other policies have worked better? It is hard to tell. I can’t wait for the 1,000s of Ph.D. thesis that will be coming out on this financial crisis and the response, most particularly those who will look at the international sides of what is going on, such as the oil price boom in 2008, the Chinese bailout of the western economy, and the shocking fall in many commodity prices worldwide that occurred. There were, and in some cases still are, price bubbles all over the map. Many assets, including some housing stocks, are still way overpriced. So the President should have a focus on economics, but maybe with a different team that thinks more creatively and does not keep falling back to the old Keynesian intellectual liquidity traps they were taught about in grad school.

It would be great if the President were to solve the Arab-Israeli problems, got a wise and long lasting deal on nuclear disarmament, saved the world from poverty and strife, captured Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, solved the global climate change riddle, ensured jobs and prosperity for all, and turned the tide against extremism worldwide. It would also be great if the movement of our troops out of Iraq was to be peaceful and smooth, but it may not be. Keep your eyes on the ABOT and KABOT. These are the top terror targets in the world. It would also be super if Afghanistan stopped being one of the most violent and corrupt places on earth and our troops came home with something of a victory in hand. However, I am not holding my breath on any of them.

A major part of the problem the President Obama faces is that many of the problems and crisis he is expected to solve are long term problems that require long term solutions, but politics keeps driving his administration to find short term solutions. These short term solutions are more often than not counterproductive, slightly helpful, or just simply impatient.

This is not the President’s fault. This is the nature of Washington. The House and the Senate are no better on this. The House may be the worst place right now to try to get anything done, never mind whether it is short of long term. Congress, and especially the House, is in such partisan bickering, self-interested back-stabbing, and election-grabbing blindness to the point that the US is being put in jeopardy. The country needs decisions. It needs real analysis. It needs leadership. Congress has very few real leaders any more. It has street fighters, infighters, and elections analysts.

It is time for some very big changes in the way these “leaders” do business. This is exactly the wrong time for such selfishness. The country truly is in a series of national security, economic, and even cultural crises. Where are the leaders? Where are the next great deal makers and movers and shakers that can get things done like Senator Ted Kennedy? Where are they? What I see are a bunch of cubs scratching at each other for each little morsel of vote. We need some lions to put the cubs in line for the sake of the country. Wake up ladies and gentlemen of our political leadership the ship of state is getting tossed in serious storms and you are bickering at the card table. Enough is enough.

The problem with the strategic and political leadership of this country is not to be found just in the White House. (There are surely some people there who do not belong there except that they were politically appointed. Political appointees are usually the worst of the lot when the country needs to get things done.) The major problem is in the relations within Congress and between the Congress and The White House and its departments and agencies. It is time to start to get this fixed before something truly bad happens.

There are many people toiling in the many agencies and departments of the government. There are many putting their lives on the line for their country here, as first responders and others, and overseas. These are the people that make the government work. These are the people who help secure the state. Let’s help them out with some solid leadership and strategic thinking development.

There are also 330 million Americans out there who rely on the leadership in Washington. They are losing faith in it at all levels. It is time to change the way things are done. This country is too important for personal electoral interest, lobbying interests and other interests to take precedence over the national prosperity and security of the country. So why is just that happening?

Even with all of this mess called Washington leadership our allies and enemies alike should not underestimate the power, resilience and intelligence of the President and of those who work on national security issues. Don’t be fooled by the media yammering about the weakened President. He is a Chicago politician with a powerfully resilient background who has ivy-league degrees. Don’t underestimate a man in crisis when he is someone who has seen many crises and challenges in his past and has won.

A message to our enemies: Don’t mess with Obama. He is from the city of big shoulders. He is also a lot more clever and quiet at getting things done, especially internationally, than you might think.

A message to our allies: We all face similar economic, military, diplomatic and other challenges. They are such powerful and complex problems that coalitions and very creative thinking are required. President Obama can be one of the great coalition makers of history. Work with him. We may not solve the many problems we face, but together we might just manage them better for the sake of all of us.

The White House is confirming that the president will not attend the annual EU summit this spring. After his 10 foreign trips last year, it looks look Obama is scaling back his foreign travel.

The analogy goes like this. Carter looked weak to America’s enemies in the first year of his presidency. Taking the measure of the man, the next year they hammered him.

The fear of history repeating itself is repeatedly coming from different corners of the think tank community.

Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Walter Russell Mead writes at Foreign Policy: “Neither a cold-blooded realist nor a bleeding-heart idealist, Barack Obama has a split personality when it comes to foreign policy. So do most U.S. presidents, of course, and the ideas that inspire this one have a long history at the core of the American political tradition. In the past, such ideas have served the country well. But the conflicting impulses influencing how this young leader thinks about the world threaten to tear his presidency apart — and, in the worst scenario, turn him into a new Jimmy Carter.”

Here is what I wrote last October. Like Carter, Obama’s “rhetoric of soft power is inspiring and ever hopeful. But unless the nation seems firmly committed to backing that soft power with some hard muscle, those with no love of America will interpret the rhetoric as the vapid mooings of a nation in retreat. That interpretation could make 2010 a year of living dangerously.”

The president did not help himself with a State of the Union address that treated national security and foreign policy as an afterthought. In one of the longest presidential speeches in modern memory, the tough issues were hardly mentioned.

There were at least five key things the president ought to have said.

America is living in the margin of error for predicting when Iran may obtain a nuclear weapon. Obama should have acknowledged that in order to protect itself against threats from Iran and other rogue regimes, the United States needs robust missile defenses now. Eliminating the plan to emplace interceptors in Poland was a great mistake, and the White House’s "charm" offensive has failed. Consequently, America needs to take a tough stand with the Tehran regime--put tougher sanctions in place now and spotlight Tehran’s horrific human rights record.

Afghanistan is a war that must be won. The President should have made clear that he puts the vital interests of the United States above an arbitrary deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Battling terrorism is Job #1. Obama should have declared that the massacre at Fort Hood, the failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound Christmas Day flight, and the suicide bombing that murdered seven CIA officers were a clear "wake-up call" for Washington. He should have given a shout-out to the Patriot Act. He should have admitted that military commissions, the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, and CIA-led investigations are important for holding terrorists accountable and getting the vital information needed to protect the nation.

Alliance maintenance needs to be a higher priority. The last year has seen significant strains in vital long-standing alliances and threats to important emerging strategic relationships. The United States can only revitalize these relationships by demonstrating it will vigorously protect its vital national interests and press free and independent nations to meet their obligations to support common defense needs.

Free trade works and is vital to growing the American economy. America cannot defend itself and its allies if the U.S. economy is weak. For the first time since The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal created the global Index of Economic Freedom, the United States dropped from the top tier of free economies. US loss of economic freedom was the worst decline among the world’s 20 major economies. The President should have declared that promoting a free trade agenda, along with dropping "buy American," cutting taxes, deregulating, and reducing government spending are essential to returning the U.S. to the ranks of the world’s freest economies.

We got none of that.

Worse it is clear that even his few words are not matched by deeds. Defense spending is a case in point. The most newsworthy item in the State of the Union address was the president’s decision to freeze discretionary spending, but exempting defense and homeland security. Left unsaid, however, was that the White House has no intent in increasing defense spending. Overall, this year defense spending won’t go up by much more than the cost of inflation. On the other had, the President is cutting the core defense budget. That started last year with the FY2010 budget. Even without a budget freeze Obama’s cuts to defense will grow in the out years. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the average Pentagon budget for the period covering fiscal years 2011 through 2028 will be $50 billion less in real dollars than its current estimate for this fiscal year. In short, the White House is cutting the defense budget, both in real dollar terms and as a percent of the economy.

The prognosis for the patient is not good…but perhaps not fatal.

Our president has nothing to show for his first year of effort, but hopefully he will turn the corner and take a stand and, hopefully, the world will notice.

Hopeful signs:

The White House is going through with arms sales for Taiwan…That’s good sends a tough message to China.

The Senate recently passed a tough sanctions bill on Iran. Hopefully, the president will sign it.

Instead of cutting the staff at the National Counterterrorism Center, the administration is now going to build up the NCTC staff.

Looks like the President will abandon the wrongheaded move to hold high profile terrorist trials in New York.

Whether, these recent decisions represent a president increasingly willing to use American power to protect American interests, or just responding to bad polls numbers remains to be seen.

Hopefully, Obama will get his act together before America’s enemies—leaving the Carter legacy far behind.

A year after his triumphant inauguration, all the glory has faded into reality, and the President is getting the hell kicked out of him at home and abroad. The Russians, Chinese and Bin Laden are thumbing their nose at him. A super majority of Democrats can’t push through a health plan. All he gets for staunching a near fatal wound to the American financial system is second-guessing at Congressional hearings. And, to top it off, the year begins with a former Cosmo model who has joined the Senate from Massachusetts (!) likely scuttling whatever agenda he had in the first year.

So now what? Leslie Gelb, of the Council of Foreign Affairs, is likening the current situation to the disaster that befell the Carter Administration. Like most historical analogies, it contains a kernel of truth. Domestic problems and one big foreign policy issue – the Iranian hostages that obsessed the country daily, overwhelmed Carter. After Vietnam, Tehran painfully reminded that we were perceived as weak. The Russians invaded Afghanistan thinking we would never react. The combination was fatal for Carter.

But, as a wag once said, the situation is hopeless but not impossible. Obama needs to stay optimistic and not fall into Carter’s self-inflicted malaise. He also needs to be honest with the American people. We are less going to have a grand sweep by the Obama Administration than a continued muddle through with some up ticks.

Domestically, Obama will likely have a better year in 2010. People vote their pocketbooks. Unemployment has likely plateaued and should decrease somewhat over the next twelve months. Much of the “shovel ready” projects (and they never were) are kicking in and the employed populace is beginning to feel better about spending. So that wound, while deep, will be staunched. Some form of health reform will go through – though far less than the original, inflated grand plan.

As for the foreign policy side, I can understand why he short-changed the issue in the State of the Union. Unlike Nixon or Clinton, we are dealing with a large number of intractable issues that do not lend themselves to grand gestures. Nobel Prize aside – proving upper class Swedes like him – Obama cannot quickly solve the problems in Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan with an army of special envoys. He can, however, continue to slog it out in all three places.

The ramp up of troops in Afghanistan will increase our casualties, but give us a better shot at some form of stabilizing the situation. Continuing to pin down and kill Al Queda while countering the Taliban is the best outcome we can hope for with an unstable (and not likely to change) Pakistan.

We will also continue to withdraw from Iraq, which has calmed down more than the chattering classes are willing to admit here. Still, we must understand that their internal battles for control will continue long after we have left.

Palestine is not likely to be much more than it is. Israel must protect itself and the Palestinians have internal problems not solved by the stroke of a pen over land. The leadership is still coming to grips with the ugly reality of trying to govern. Not as much fun as continuing to be revolutionary guerillas.

As for our nation state friends like China and Russia, they see the US as weak economically and bogged down in two wars. They will rattle their swords and yank our chains as often as possible while they can. Fortunately, they have their own domestic headaches. Putin is depending upon oil prices to maintain his power over a restive political class. And the Chinese are likely to be dealing with an overheated economy and a billion have nots seething over those who have more. The North Koreans have their own logic much balanced on continuing the Kim dynasty.

Al Queda and its franchisees will also continue their asymmetric attacks on us because they know it plays well in the press and they can do it quite well. Straightening out our tangled intelligence gathering will help. Supporting Yemen will also help. But this is a battle of a generation, not an immediately winnable war. Ultimately, Al Queda is about the battle over the modernization of Islam and the strong desire among a minority to fight against what they view as westernization. All we can do is support the moderates and stop thinking that because we explain ourselves better, all will go away.

So, I understand why the President wants to deal with domestic issues first. And I don’t blame him. He is shoring up his party in the off year elections and keeping a wary eye out for 2012 when the economy, he hopes, will be better enough to get him reelected. In the meantime, Bo may be his best comfort.

Post-war America grew accustomed to stability and predictability in its foreign policy. The tightly configured strategic space of the Cold War days left relatively little room for the individual character traits and idiosyncratic attitudes of Presidents to affect more than tactics and the modalities of specific engagements. The opening to China was the big exception. Otherwise, those personal features came into play only at moments of crisis management, e.g. the Cuban missile crisis, Berlin, the Vietnam endgame. Moreover, domestic affairs were not of cardinal importance; they did not weigh heavily on what we wanted to do and could do abroad. There was near universal agreement on the main outlines of the country’s external relations. America’s politics reflected a nation whose citizens were confident in whom and what they were. There was coherence to our political life.

All those elements have changed progressively over the past generation. That brings us back to the tribulations of Mr. Obama and their implications for our place in the world.

Let me offer a few propositions to prime what surely will be a wide-ranging discussion.

1. There is a serious disconnect between growing self-doubt about the historic American enterprise at home, on the one hand, and the unprecedented audacity of our commitments to remake societies in remote (geographically and culturally) parts of the globe as components of a pax Americana across the Greater Middle East, on the other. The residue of 9/11 has concealed the extremity of that contradiction. It needs to be addressed candidly. Only the President can do that. Mr. Obama, however, suffers from a number of liabilities in this respect that cast into doubt the likelihood of his doing so. Indeed, in his State of the Union address he ignored the challenge totally.

He is an instinctive partisan of the conventional wisdom in all meaningful aspects of our national life. However we judge the merits of the ensuing policies, he is not of an intellectual cum political temperament suited to leading a collective reexamination of that conventional wisdom’s foundations – whatever the conclusions reached. Political weakness and a matching preoccupation with the short-term, electoral considerations of every policy judgment he makes reinforces those inertial tendencies. Tinkering, quick reads and agile adjustments become the norm. Mr. Obama – for all his intelligence and rhetoric power –shows few signs of being reflective and imaginative enough to break out of the pattern.

2. The rest of the world is becoming less inclined to respond to American direction. There are, of course, enormous variations in those attitudes, and practical acceptance of the United States’ indispensability is wide spread – for the time-being in regard to specific problems. But confidence is ebbing that we normally ‘get it right,’ that we act on the basis of a more rather less enlightened conception of self-interest, that there are core convictions underlying American foreign policy. For good reason. That perceptual reality, accompanied by a renewed tendency to look at us through a glass darkly, is strengthened by the unbecoming conduct of a country whose internal affairs seem to be spinning out of control, in good part due to political persons and processes devoid of sobriety and responsibility. We are becoming more spectacle than spectacular.

3. There are reciprocal influences between declining influence and the dubiety of the rationales for so much of what we are doing. This is most telling in the very places we have put ourselves out on a limb – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine. The most cursory review of the local elites’ skeptical attitudes toward our doings should make that clear. For the purposes of this discussion, two implications stand out. First, the tarnishing of Mr. Obama’s image at home inescapably means a tarnishing of his image abroad. That is of cardinal importance given how very important his persona and fresh new style has been in creating a more favorable image of the United States.

Many across the world have always seen America as having a dual personality. Triumph of a man of color who also was a compelling figure signaled that the ‘good’ America had ultimately prevailed. That judgment in now being cast into doubt – by a combination of our unchanged behavior, by Mr. Obama’s de-mythification and by our unseemly political shenanigans.

4. There are other, interested observers in the wings who see advantage and opportunity in all this. China above all, but also Russia and closer to home Brazil. They certainly do not want either a paralyzed president or an American economy fated to struggle with major structural flaws. At the same time, we should not kid ourselves that we will continue to enjoy the accustomed deference and respect in the future (and associated privileges). That holds for the managing of international monetary affairs as well as politico-security matters. Narrowed prerogatives will add mightily to the challenges facing American foreign policy and diplomacy. It most certainly will add to the burdens of the President, thereby magnifying all his disabilities and the price to be paid for them.

5. In short, it is not just President Obama who is in deep trouble; it is the country. Unless we can surmount our juvenile politics, and unless Mr. Obama finds within himself qualities not yet apparent, we will see a rapid externalization of our internal incoherence.