President Obama “Strikes Out” in Trip Around the World
This coming immediately after the elections in which the Democratic Party lost control of the House of Representatives and its majority in the Senate was reduced considerably, painted a vivid portrait of an administration in trouble.
The Americano
No matter where one looked the reviews of President Barack Obama’s recent 10-day around the world journey were not good.
The lead story on Friday’s New York Times was outright blunt in its assessment of the trip: It said that the President’s “hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts . . . putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.”
This coming immediately after the elections in which the Democratic Party lost control of the House of Representatives and its majority in the Senate was reduced considerably, painted a vivid portrait of an administration in trouble.
In reality, it was worse. What we are seeing is the image of a country whose influence around the world is greatly diminished. That affects Republicans and Democrats alike, for it is the image of a nation, not a party or a president, in trouble. A nation that has to show its internal resolve to cope with its own economic problems before it can hope to regain the worldwide influence it has enjoyed for so many decades.
Towards the end of the trip, President Obama, speaking in Tokyo wanted to minimize his defeats and used a sports metaphor in an attempt to regain the initiative.
“Instead of hitting home-runs, sometimes were going to hit singles,” Obama said.
His metaphor did not fly.
Jake Tapper, ABC’s White House correspondent, did a report on the trip for This Week With Christiane Amanpour, in which he used the president’s metaphor to describe a trip that the network’s own webpage titled: “America’s Declining Clout.”
Tapper reminded viewers that the president wanted to use the trip as a way of distracting the voters from the “shellacking” they had given the administration’s party and to try and focus on America’s needs to create new jobs. A growth in American exports to Asia, one of the fastest growing regions in the world, would help create new American jobs at home.
Tapper used the tape of Obama talking about the need to sometimes hit singles instead of homeruns .
“And sometimes he (the president) struck out,” Tapper said in his story.
In it Tapper detailed the president’s major failures. He said the president failed to convince:
· South Korea to open its market to American beef and cars. At stake: $10 billion in exports and 70,000 American jobs.
· Chinese President Hu Jintao to stop artificially building up the dollar and holding down Chinese currency.
· His fellow G-20 leaders to use stronger language in the joint declaration on China’s currency manipulation.
“The president was even forced to push back on attacks that the U.S. was engaging in its own currency manipulation, defending a move by the independent Federal Reserve to inject $600 billion into the U.S. economy,” Tapper said in his report.
The ABC correspondent ended his piece with a comment that spoke to the character of a president who less than two years ago believed the power of his words and ideas would improve the image of the United States around the world. Back then, some said, the president was arrogant. But it was a difficult statement to make when audiences around the world received him like a rock star and listened and applauded his every word.
Not after his trip.
“Modesty was forced upon the president in this trip full of complications,” Tapper said at the end of his story.
Now he faces a new week of brutal domestic politics at home, weakened by the mid-term elections and shaken by the realization that the United States has little support for its economic policies around the world.
The Americano / Agencies
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