Barack Obama: better never than late

"Buck Farrack" is a hugely popular car sticker in the Commonwealth of Virginia, if my time there recently is any guide. From McLean in the northeast to Charlottesville near the centre, to Bristol in southwest corner of the state, more and more fine Christians are letting their car’s boot do the talking.

Virginians like the Brits, the French, the Japanese, the Egyptians and the Israelis, differ in many respects, but are united when it comes to their feelings for the former community organiser.

From London to Belfast, people are talking about the end of the "special relationship" with America, despite Her Majesty’s ongoing sacrifices in Afghanistan. In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has openly criticised President Barack Obama for the better part of a year.

Relations with Tokyo are tender, chiefly because of the realisation that Obama (like Prime Minister Kevin Rudd) is warming to the People’s Republic of China, at the expense of a long and trusted ally.

In Cairo, there is anger in the highest of circles about Obama’s seeming acceptance of a nuclear armed Iran. And in Jerusalem, the Israelis no longer wonder why the President criticises Jewish housing construction while he stays “mum” on Arab housing constructions and more broadly, on human rights abuses from Rabat to Ramallah to Ramadi. They just endure his bias. “Is the President engineering the downfall of the Netanyahu government” is the quintessential barbeque stopper.

Last Friday, March 19 is a case in point. The so-called “Palestinian Authority” in the Arab settlement of Ramallah, dedicated a square to terrorist Dalal Moghrabi. Representatives of Mahmoud Abbas, he who enjoys the full confidence of President Obama, attended the ceremony. Moghrabi, many recall, was part of Islamic group which in 1978 blew up and set fire to a civilian bus, burning 35 men, women, children alive. And as for any Obama White House condemnation of this obscenity as an “impediment to peace”? Don’t hold your breath.

A moderately less self-centred administration might be asking why so many allies are worried. After all, so far it is the United States’ enemies that have attracted attention of the Obama White House and not its friends.

The president has shown limitless fortitude with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done late last year. He accepted a torrent of verbal abuse from Tehran, before hesitantly turning, if not moving, towards implementing sanctions. And as his administration continues to woo a terrorist listed state, Syria, he makes time to nearly sever relations with Jerusalem over a minor infraction, like the recent housing dispute.

Today, the President was due to leave the White House for the long flight from Joint Base Andrews Naval Air Facility outside Washington DC, to Canberra Airport (via his former madrassa (as some believe it was) in Jakarta), implicitly to lend election year support to a fellow leftist, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Apart from the warm reception he could have expected from our sycophantic Prime Minister and mostly obsequious Members of Parliament, he could also look forward to hassle free airport processing on arrival. Lucky for him, passports and not original birth certificates must be shown to Australian Customs and Border Protection Service agents in order to clear arrival formalities. After all, the self described “Hawaiian” for nearly two years, can’t or won’t, tender his birth certificate and put to rest once and for all the smouldering controversy over his qualification for office.

Also today, the United States House of Representatives is voting to approve an already passed Senate health care bill (and an accompanying truckload of revisions), which the United States Senate will in turn have to approve at a later date. This reform will cost $940 million (A$1 billion) and extend health coverage to 32 million Americans currently uninsured.

The President has postponed his trip to Canberra and Jakarta so as to shepherd the bill through the House. At long last both he and Congressional Democrats fathom that Americans are not taking a shine to this health care bill. Win, lose or draw in the House, the American people remain unenthusiastic.

The President very much likes to remind Americans of the mess he inherited - economy, terrorism, health care - and all that he's doing to fix it. A “hey, I’ve put in the hard yards” mentality has infused his speeches as he bemoans people's fleeting memory about what life was like way back when, in 2008, particularly on the economy.

Obama has made an industry out of underlining all the good he believes his bunch of amateurs have done. "Our progress has been unmistakable," he said as the new year dawned. "We've disrupted terrorist financing, cutting off recruiting chains, … [and] thwarted plots here in the United States and saved countless American lives."

Unfortunately for Obama, each time he recounts his “success”, he is mugged by the public, who must live in the here and now. And what’s terribly discomforting for the inexperienced one and for his menagerie of advisors, is that the public are in the main the mugs that voted for him.

On terrorism, Americans are not concerned about his undemonstrated successes. They focus on his troubling failures. Remember the Islamic terrorist who was foiled on Christmas Day?

On the economy, people crave good news and not updates on how things are gradually getting less bad.

So rather than talk of how great things could be under his continued rule, he has moved the goal post to define progress by comparing his today to what things were like under President George W. Bush.

Here’s an example. While the economy is on life support and people are still losing their jobs and their houses, if not their minds and their dignities, like a jack rabbit, he is quick to remind us that, yes, 85,000 jobs were lost in December, 26,000 in January and 36, 000 in February, but remember the job losses started in January 2009 (on W’s watch) and were roughly 700,000 a month.

True, things are not as bad as before. But tell that to the man or woman who is out of work.

An overwhelming majority of people say that Obama is steering the country in the wrong direction (56 per cent v 38 per cent), according to the March Associated Press-GfK poll. Not a good omen for Democrats as they careen towards midterm elections, trying to hang onto control of the House and Senate. Obama, to the overwhelming number of Virginians and a growing number of Americans more broadly, liken the President at the wheel of the economy to Captain Edward John Smith at the wheel of RMS Titanic.

Apart from parroting that he “isn’t George W. Bush”, Obama has done very little that can be described as positive for either US allies or for America’s working families. Granted he has done superbly for Wall Street’s large donors to the Democratic National Committee, some of whom, like Mr Hassan Nemazee, are guilty of stupendous frauds. In Mr Nemazee’s case a US$292 million (A$324 million) fraud.

He is angered that many Americans have overlooked his “achievements” in 2009. After all, he reasons, he has addressed a range of problems: hate crimes, tobacco advertisements aimed at children, and pay disparities for women. A bit like Kevin 2010 talking about a human response to illegal arrivals, the phasing out of incandescent globes or simultaneously ripping apart Peter Costello’s WorkChoices, but keeping those parts that suits his government.

With the setting down of the sun daily, Obama gets closer to signing what could be the one of the biggest domestic laws in decades, an overhaul of health coverage in America. Ironic then that as he inches closer, the more public support he loses. As many polls indicate: the public wants health care reform. Just not Obama’s version of it. Independents and moderate Democrats have tuned out. The GOP never tuned in. But the community organiser can always rely on the Bolsheviks in his party to stay loyal to his health care manifesto. Sadly for the President, Bolsheviks are in the minority. Even north of the Mason Dixon line.

The principle reason why Obama is unpopular at home is simple: under his watch and extra 4 million names were added to the jobless totals: 15.9 million people are now registered unemployed. The official unemployment rate of 10.4 per cent ignore those who are too tired or too depressed to record their misfortune, that is the hopeless and the chronically underemployed. A better indication of just how America's jobless are faring is nudging 17 per cent. A recent Gallup Poll found that in the 12 months to February 2010, Obama’s disapproval rating has skyrocketed from 10 per cent to 46 per cent. Quite the reversal of fortune.

Failing so spectacularly the two crucial domestic tests: unemployment and health care, Obama has tried to meet the euphoric predictions of a sweeping foreign policy revolution.

Many will recall his desire to restore America’s global image as his administration’s Job #1, and few forget that he advocated dialogue with even the most despotic leaders as Job #2. While the world has proved to be a tougher place than Obama’s team expected, that hasn’t dimmed his vision. He still refuses to check into reality. Not only has he made diddly squat progress on foreign policy challenges, one could argue that he has regressed America’s influence in the world.

Obama’s principal foreign policy faults have been an unwillingness to assume the mantle of responsibility for his position and a self-centred outlook.

Certainly, Barack Obama entered office during a time of great challenges. But, a president’s foreign policy should be driven more by what it is, rather than what it isn’t. Beating his chest, yelling, “I’m not Bush” only goes so far. About as far as Prime Minister Rudd bleating that he isn’t Howard. After 15 months in office it’s time to move beyond a knee-jerk response of blaming everything on Bush.

Obama’s other principal shortcoming is doggedly focusing on his narrative to the exclusion of history. He needs to worry about representing the United States and not polishing his image. He must stop undermining American interests by repeatedly apologising for historic events, while simultaneously pleading that they occurred before his presidency.

North Korea and Iran responded to Obama’s outreached hand of dialogue by provocatively launching long-range missiles and unabashedly continuing their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Mirroring Hamastan’s response to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Islamic terrorists continue to attack Americans interests and to slaughter Americans, long after Bush’s departure, after Obama’s pro Islamic sermon in Cairo, and after his vigorous comments against a popular Swiss ban on minarets.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration undercut NATO allies by scrapping plans for missile defence sites in Eastern Europe, in a lamentable and Chamberlainesque effort to placate Russia. The hope was that the Russian bear would lean on Iran to halt its nuclear program. Fat chance. The Arab-Israeli peace process has floundered, unsurprisingly given the great faith Obama puts in leading Holocaust denier, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

China continues its military swagger to be the dominant power on the planet, and Obama shows he has no absolutely no idea how to keep it in check.

And as for his great commitment to cap-and-trade? He was mugged by the reality of Copenhagen and even by members of his own party, which demonstrated that Americans couldn’t conceive of worrying about the environment when they are too busy worrying about their lack of a day job.

All in all, President Barack Obama is consistent.

By disappointing American working families on both jobs and health care, he has shown himself to be a colossal failure. And by living in a world as he’d like it to be rather than as it is, he has upset his allies, disappointed his friends, emboldened America’s Islamic enemies and unambiguously diminished America’s standing as the “indispensable nation”.

Apologising for his inability to visit now, Obama has pencilled in a Canberra stopover for June.

But by June, with a continued slide in the polls and most of his administration on the nose with American voters, in particular his Chief of Staff, Rham Emmanuel (the butt of jokes by the liberal media no less), it is likely that the one term President will be too busy to fly, preoccupied as he will be shoehorning Emanuel into a United States Senate seat.

Frankly, if President Obama never travels here, it will be too soon.