ANOTHER MAN OFF THE UNICORN RIDE:

Barack Obama’s great test: The American president’s attitude towards international allies, partners and adversaries reveals the limits of his political leadership, says (Godfrey Hodgson, 30 - 09 - 2009, Open Democracy)

A whirlwind week of international diplomacy in the United States, in which Barack Obama was at the very centre, provides as true a measure as any of the emerging character of his political leadership. The news is not good. For this intense series of high-profile events and meetings on 22-25 September 2009 - from the United Nations climate-change conference to the UN general-assembly circus and a range of bilateral meetings with foreign leaders - confirms the limitations of Obama's style and approach. [...]

Barack Obama is increasingly coming to look like Lyndon B Johnson, a brilliantly gifted politician whose ambition to build a "great society" was sacrificed because of the war in Vietnam. [...]

No one questions Barack Obama's personal goodwill, still less his political intelligence. But on the basis of his first nine months in office, his commitment to a serious reassessment of the limitations of American power - let alone to an acknowledgment of the implications of the country's relative decline - is not yet clear.

They repeat the notion of his intelligence like a mantra, but all it does is prevent them from analyzing him clearly. It's the flip-side of the insistence, likewise refuted by the facts, that W is an idiot.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 30, 2009 2:06 PM