When unabashed Democrat stalwarts in the press like Richard Cohen over at the Washington Post write a column like this one, you'd better know Barack Obama is in a world of hurt. Yes, the notoriously naive Cohen still believes that the President is a relatively moderate fellow (as opposed to those "archconservatives" like George W. Bush) and he is sure that Obama is a gifted orator with "a shimmering intellect."Nevertheless, as much as Cohen wanted his fellow liberal to succeed, he hasn't. Indeed, Obama's aloof, indifferent air towards the perils in which our nation has found itself, Cohen concludes, is turning off the populace but quick.
It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges -- of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama's approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.
For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much...
