Grand Old President Obama

So, he’s done it at last, Obama has ‘surged.’ Why am I reminded of a certain Grand old Duke of York? Is it because when he is up he is up; when he is down he is down; and when he is only half way up he is neither up nor down? So let’s hear it:

Grand old President Obama,
He had thirty thousand men;
He marched them in to Afghanistan,
And he marched them out again.

Well, that’s what he wants to do; that’s what he said he is going to do. The trouble is he is neither up nor down, in nor out. In his usual muddle-headed and decisively indecisive fashion he is trying to reconcile contradictory aims: he wants to win the war but he does not want to get bogged down in another Vietnam. He has to convince America, he has to convince his own party, largely made up of pacifists and peaceniks of various shades of pink, that his commitment is not ‘open-ended’, that the boys will be coming home not next year but the year after. He also has to convince the Taliban that America is in to win, no matter how long it takes. Do you see; do you see how this man ties himself in impossible knots?

Look at it from the Taliban point of view; just imagine what a boost they have received to their morale. They did not need spies and interceptors: they’ve been able to see inside this man’s mind for months. His inexcusable delay in making up his mind shows that he has no stomach for this fight and that he really does wish to depart. He’s now made a vague promise about departure, one he is almost bound to hold to in some fashion or other, because by 2011 America will already be looking towards the next presidential election. Without firing another shot, or exploding another bomb, the Taliban has already won an important tactical victory. All they have to do is hang on, an army of ants pursued by an elephant, waiting for Obama’s contradictions to mature.

Here is a President, possibly the worst ever, possibly just another James Buchanan, who does not speak and act like a commander-in-chief; he speaks like a politician, forever minding his back, forever looking over his shoulder; mid-terms in 2010, the big one in 2012. America is now in a kind of limbo, not knowing exactly where it is going, or even why it wants to be there. The war is either necessary or it is not. It is either vital to America’s security, to the security of the west, or it is not. Obama does not give a clear lead in one direction or the other.

As I have said now on a number of occasions he is still on the campaign trail, not an executive just a rather edgy candidate. Yes, he has been given the tools but he has not the stamina, he has not the will, he has not the energy to finish the job. Please do remember that you read this unhappy prediction here first. Oh, and if you don’t know who James Buchanan is he was another prevaricator, the one who saw America drift towards the Civil War.

Late last night upon the stair I met a President who wasn’t there

What was the most embarrassing political moment of this month, perhaps of this year? For me there is no doubt about the answer: it was Obama in China, about which no opera will ever be written. Is this really an American President? Where was the courage, where was the determination to speak against injustice, where was the frank exchange of views: where was Tibet?

Oh, well, on reflection, how could he raise such a sensitive issue when he came to China a little like a customer heavily in debt summoned to the office of the bank manager? Better to stick to some ineffectual mumbling about firewalls in a meeting packed with the youthful cardres of the ruling oligarchy. America may rule the world but it seems patently obvious that China rules Obama.

Have you read Catch 22, Joseph Heller’s wonderful black comedy set among the United States Army Air Force in the Second World War? I’ve a feeling that I may have said this before, but I shall risk repeating myself: Barack Obama reminds me of the character absurdly named Major Major Major, who joined the Air Force as a private and was immediately promoted to the rank of -you guessed it-Major! The Major is the kind of man who, when someone knocks at his door, climbs out of the window. Major Major is so good at disappearing that he eventually disappears altogether from the novel.

OK, Obama has not-yet-climbed out of the Oval Office window, but he sits there in an absolute agony of indecision, making his country look every weaker by the day. The army in Afghanistan has had to wait months for him to make up his mind on reinforcements, even though it was he himself who originally said that this war commanded a high priority, a higher priority than that waged in Iraq. Even if these reinforcements arrive in the numbers requested the Taliban has already received a huge boost to its morale. Waiting and dithering, after all, is the last stage before cut and run.

I do not know how Americans themselves feel about this but I can make no sense at all of this administration’s foreign policy. Is there a pattern other than weakness and procrastination? Is there a strategy here that I am unaware of? Obama looked weak in China; he looks even weaker in the Middle East. Here he demanded that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, stop all work on the on building settlements in the occupied territories. When Netanyahu refused he was praised by Hilary Clinton, the Secretary of State! For me the whole thing is laughably incomprehensible, a real life version of Catch 22, where nothing is quite as it seems. I suppose it’s only right to finish with a quotation from the novel, entirely appropriate, I think:

That's the way things go when you elevate mediocre people to positions of authority.

My apologies in advance if you think this harsh, but that's how he comes across to me. I suspect that is also how he comes across to much of the world, vision without substance, words without meaning, image without strength.

The Kumbaya President

It's fairly clear now that Super Obama is turning into one of the weakest, least decisive president's in American history. His health care plans are creeping forward at best. He has an army in Afghanistan though he seems no longer to understand why it is there. His commander has asked for thousands of more troops but the President still dithers, fearful of his own Vietnam, fearful of being seen to support a goverment that is corrupt and fraudulent.

I was never fooled by Obama, not for a moment. Yes, I know he is personable, I know he is charming and charismatic. He has a beautiful speaking voice and the things he says, his words, often have a poetic, almost a messianic quality. And that is the heart of the problem, the messianic nature not just of his words but of Obama himself. He simply cannot understand the disassociation between his lofty visions and prosaic realities. The simple fact is when a politician tells you that 'all things are possible' he or she is either a fool or a liar. I do not take Obama for a liar.

Hilary Clinton, once Obama's rival, now his Secretary of State, touched on the real weakness behind the man during last year's presidential campaign, touched on what she called his Kumbaya message. I'm sure you know how that goes: all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds if only we have the 'vision', if only we have the 'understanding', if only we follow Moses...or Obama. This is how she put it at a rally in Providence, Rhode Island;

I could just stand up here and say 'Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified. The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.' Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I know how hard that is going to be.

And so it has proved. Obama raised expectations that he cannot meet. He deceived himself as much as the American electorate; he came as a messiah when he was only a politician. His words continue to grow as his achievements diminish. He went down well in Cairo and the Muslim world in general, but that has not brought Israeli-Palestinian conflict one step closer to a resolution. Similarly, as Tony Harden wrote in The Telegraph, his attempts to engage with Russia and Iran are getting virtually nowhere.

In a sense he is still on the campaign trail; but the world is not Wisconsin. His rhetoric is as polished as ever, and as empty as ever. Yes, he is still the glamour-boy, the class act with whom other leaders wish to have a photo opportunity; but I suspect that they laugh at him in cabinet offices and secretariats around the world, in places where people do not sit and sing Kumbaya. He is the nothing president, the nowhere man, making all his nowhere plans for nobody. I suppose he deserved his Nobel Peace Prize, a prize for nothing, awarded by those who do sing Kumbaya.

The Not the George W Bush Prize

I have little time for President Obama politically. Still, I can recognise that he is a clever man, a good speaker and a public figure with a warming personality. I also thought that he had a certain degree of tactical skill. The acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize proves that he has none.

Just think: how much greater he would have looked if he had declined, if he had simply thanked the committee for its generosity but said that the goals set out have still to be achieved. But he could not, because this unexpected and quixotic decision by the Nobel people came at the end of a bad period for Super Obama, capped by a humiliating personal snub by the International Olympic Committee.

I now have a deeper understanding than ever of Obama: he is no more than a celebrity president for a celebrity age, an age where style and image have triumphed over substance and results. Having failed in Copenhagen he bounced back in Oslo. As far as the X factor stakes go he is still up there with a chance.

Now a word or two about the Nobel Committee. My first reaction on hearing the announcement-after thinking it must be a spoof- was that it says nothing at all about President Obama, nothing about his achievements, and heaps about them, about the obvious political bias of these people and, I would add, their desperate attempts at political correctness. It seems obvious to me that Obama is being awarded less for what he is and more for what he is not; he is not a Republican; he is not George W Bush.

Look back on the history of this absurd prize, to whom it was given and, just as important, to whom it was not. Did you know, for example, that Ghandi was nominated five times but never recognised? Those who were recognised included such doves of peace as Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin. And now Obama joins their company, still at the outset not at the end of his career. From this point forward he has the burden of being a peace laureate who most likely will have to take his country ever deeper into war. On the domestic stage he raised expectations that he has been unable to meet. Now on the world stage impossible expectations have been thrust upon him. Who, but a fool, would accept the role of Messiah for a day?

So, there he stands, with one disappointment laid hard upon another. He is dithering over Afghanistan while Americans die; his health reform programme slips and slips; Guantanamo Bay is still open in the face of all of the liberal hopes; he has provoked a quarrel between the politicians and the generals; he looks less and less plausible. And in the midst of all this, all the domestic and foreign problems, he and Michelle had the time to slip over to Copenhagen to put their weight behind Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, yet another failure, another sign that ‘Obama power’ does not work.

But cast down in one Scandinavian capital he was raised up in another, a form of personal compensation. He did not get the Olympics but at least he got ‘Peace.’ I rather suspect that the celebrity President has not the wit to understand that he did not get peace either, that he is unlikely ever to get peace. It’s the triumph of pious hopes over solid achievements.