The Times of London yesterday commented on President Barack Obama, saying in part: Nobody who heard him addressing a joint session of the House and Senate on Tuesday could doubt that Barack Obama can speak. This is a man who was born with a dais beneath his feet. But increasingly the question being asked of the new president is: Can he manage? It is a political commonplace that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. But the sound of Obama’s prose has begun to jangle. “Now is the time,” he said lulling his congressional audience, “to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” The trouble is that this wasn’t the first time that Obama told Americans that “it’s time to act.” Nobody doubts that now, in the teeth of the cruellest economic crisis in decades, it is time to act.
But the world is still not clear what actions Obama plans to take.
The administration’s selection of a new ambassador to Iraq has been little short of a farce. Having been wooed by the US vice president, the secretary of state, and the national security adviser to be America’s new man in Baghdad, Gen. Anthony Zinni — America’s former top commander in the Middle East — had naturally assumed that the paperwork would be just a formality. Then the general’s phone went silent.
Later he discovered that the job had been handed to Christopher Hill, a veteran diplomat. When the Obama camp offered Gen. Zinni the job of ambassador to Saudi Arabia as a consolation prize, he said: “I told them to stick it where the sun don’t shine.” Gen. Zinni’s fury was aroused less by the administration’s change of mind, than by its clumsiness.
Government is an impatient judge. Although the president was sworn in only last month, his country already feels a little rattled. After the beguiling eloquence of his campaign, the Obama that Americans see in the White House looks less sure-footed.
