Barack Obama: better never than late

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.