This was not a good week for Barack Obama. His trip to Copenhagen on behalf of Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid exposed him once more as an amateur. Many figured the bid was wired for Chicago because, after all, Obama wouldn’t put his prestige on the line otherwise, would he? I never thought it was wired though. I insisted to my wife that Obama simply thought his mere presence in Copenhagen would charm everyone into voting for Chicago. The damage might have been limited had Chicago at least have made it to the final round. Instead, its exit in the first round was the equivalent of an international slap in the face and one gets the feeling that all around the world yesterday people were snickering at Obama, and us. He set himself up for humiliation and the world was eager to oblige. If our president were a man with a modicum of humility he’d be humiliated. If he were as self-reflective as he urges the rest of us to be he might stop to wonder, having failed to charm the IOC in Copenhagen, what his chances were of convincing the Iranian mullahs to give up their nukes.
Checking in this moment with my girl Jennifer Rubin over at Contentions, I see that she too calls it a slap. And, as usual, she puts into words my own thinking on the subject better than I could myself. Read her whole post, but here’s an excerpt:
We’ll see in the weeks ahead whether the IOU’s slap across the face shocks Obama into some recognition of the limits of his own persona and a proper appreciation for how a president should use his time. It is perhaps finally time to put away the celebrity routine and focus on governance at home and in international affairs.
Rather than lecturing us on racial profiling, boring us with another marathon run of TV appearances, or spinning Utopian tales for the UN, he might get down to the nitty-gritty of working on the four critical issues before him: addressing the worsening job situation, devising a minimal health-care package (that doesn’t make the job situation worse and that garners some bipartisan support), implementing promptly a winning strategy in Afghanistan, and coming up with a credible approach (endless talk doesn’t cut it) to halting Iran’s nuclear program.
This is not the stuff of mass rallies or TV appearances. Obama must step into the role of president. For probably the first time in his political career, Obama cannot get by on charm. These issues are not going to be solved because he’s a “historic” president or because of anything George W. Bush can be blamed for. All that might have been the key to getting elected, but it’s not the solution to what ails him now. What he needs is to discard incompetent staff and unworkable plans, govern from the center of the political spectrum, restore his image as a resolute commander in chief, and lead rather than follow. If the Olympic-bid fiasco can set him on the course to do all that, it will prove worth the temporary hit. And if not, it will mark the moment when the wheels finally came off the Obama presidency.
This is wise counsel from Ms. Rubin but who among us thinks Obama will follow it?
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