Obama: Leading from Behind

As I have lamented many times on this blog, those of us who fell for Barack Obama's campaign mantra for "change" and who thought we were electing a leader have been disappointed time and time again. Obama is not a leader and instead is a follower. Domestically, he dithers and waits for Congressional Democrats to fill the leadership void - a scary concept in itself - or, on occasion acts only when the uproar on a particular issue reaches a crescendo. In a column today in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer complains that Obama is playing a similar "leading from behind" non-leadership role in international affairs as well. I frequently view Krauthammer as a jerk, but he does have a point on our non-leader president even if the examples cited in the analysis are flawed. I suspect that many Americans are tired of the refusal of Obama to lead instead of follow. Here are some column highlights:
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To be precise, leading from behind is a style, not a doctrine. Doctrines involve ideas, but since there are no discernible ones that make sense of Obama foreign policy — Lizza’s painstaking two-year chronicle shows it to be as ad hoc, erratic and confused as it appears — this will have to do.
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And it surely is an accurate description, from President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It’s been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) “international community” to do what only America can.
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But underlying that style, assures this Obama adviser, there really are ideas. Indeed, “two unspoken beliefs,” explains Lizza. “That the relative power of the U.S. is declining, as rivals like China rise, and that the U.S. is reviled in many parts of the world.” Amazing. This is why Obama is deliberately diminishing American presence, standing and leadership in the world?
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It is the fate of any assertive superpower to be envied, denounced and blamed for everything under the sun. Nothing has changed. Moreover, for a country so deeply reviled, why during the massive unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Syria have anti-American demonstrations been such a rarity?
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Other presidents have taken anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing — as do most Americans — in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America’s fitness for leadership. I would suggest that “leading from behind” is a verdict on Obama’s fitness for leadership. Leading from behind is not leading. It is abdicating. It is also an oxymoron.