ASSESSMENTS OF THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY

Peggy Noonan has a critical assessment of the Obama presidency. He may be losing support from some liberals, including some in the media. Noonan discusses Elizabeth Drew and Leslie Gelb's recent critiques of Obama's presidency.

Drew's assessment of Obama's advisors: She scored "the Chicago crowd," which she characterized as "a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team." The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision—"an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment."

Noonan comments: Who are the wise men and women now? Who are the Robert Lovetts, Chip Bohlens and Robert Strausses who can came in to help a president in trouble right his ship? America seems short of wise men, or short on those who are universally agreed to be wise.

The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.

Noonan also notes that a president's actions and image created in the first year of a presidency, often stay with the president. It remains to be seen, but Obama doesn't appear to be coming across as a Lincoln or Kennedy--the Carter image seems to be more appropriate at this point.

The Economist asks: "Does this president have a strategy. . .?" It assesses both his critics and those arguing that he is only in the first inning of a grand strategy. The writer states: It is a fair point, but as the months drag on, the “weak” case has been gaining the upper hand. Mr Obama has yet to show he has the staying power to take on a dangerous, stubborn and occasionally bad world. Even allowing for Israel’s shift this week, the president has hardly lived up to his promise to work for Middle East peace “with all the patience and dedication that the task requires”. With one big exception, he has not yet shown that he can back his oratory with a stick—and that was a tariff on Chinese tyres, a weak sop to America’s unions.