from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 26 Jul 2009 07:17 PM PDT

Six months in and the Obama Administration looks a lot like the
Bush Administration did after 8 years, with policy messes on every side,
growing public discomfort with the direction the country is taking, and no
clue what to do next.

In both domestic and foreign policy, the Obama Administration
is flailing badly. At home its big accomplishments have been the generally
unpopular bailouts and stimulus package which failed to accomplish
anything, except preserve the jobs of some of his supporters, while vastly
inflating the deficit. Had they been followed by an actual recovery, Obama
might have something to hang his hat on. Instead he's had to begin soft
pedaling the economy in favor of vague speeches and reassurances that do
nothing to reassure the 1 in 10 Americans who are out of
work.

Obamacare, which was supposed to succeed where the Clintons
had failed, ran into skepticism from the same conservative Democrats that
the Democratic congress had relied on to create a congressional majority.
While the AARP was a cakewalk, having wedged the heavily pro Obama Avis
executive Barry Rand who had contributed nearly 10 grand to Obama, as the
AARP's new CEO. The AMA and the many HMO's were a far trickier
beast.

Obama was essentially proposing to destroy one of America's
healthiest and most profitable industries, and not even his relentless
media attack dogs could make much headway. Particularly when Obama's
public speeches went light on the details and high on empty feel good
rhetoric. With ObamaCare postponed for the fall, Obama will have another
shot at destroying independent health care in America, but as he has
already learned, it won't be an easy ride.

Having failed on both
health care and the economy, Obama's defenders would have to point
overseas to find any accomplishments to pad out the Beloved Leader's
portfolio. Unfortunately for them, Obama has failed just as badly abroad.
The diplomacy express that was supposed to make the world like us again
has boiled down to nothing more than a series of high profile speeches
that have yielded no tangible results. Meanwhile Obama's actual attempts
at international intervention have failed on every front.

The North
Korean track has bogged down into an embarrassing exchange of juvenile
namecalling between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the North
Koreans. Meanwhile two US journalists remain as hostages in North Korea,
casualties of a hopelessly weak administration that is seen as nothing
more than a paper tiger, without even the tiger part.

The high
profile side of Obama's international agenda was Israel. Obama and his
Saudi appointees at the NSC chose to pursue a bluntly anti-Israel
pro-Saudi track meant to create a Palestinian Arab state as soon as
possible, regardless of the realities on the ground. But the hard push
backfired as Obama underestimated his appeal among both Israelis and
American Jews. With both Netanyahu and the Conference of Presidents of
Major Jewish Organizations that represents the American Jewish
organizations in America, rejecting his hard line positions on Jerusalem
and Judea and Samaria-- the Israel track ranks as another failure for
Obama.

Iran was meant to be easy enough, with Obama's people
running out the clock to let Iran get nuclear weapons, while using the
timetable to pressure Israel into making concessions, in exchange for
protection that would never actually materialize.

Inconveniently
enough the Iranian people chose to respond to a blatantly rigged elections
with massive protests and street riots, combined with the cutting edge use
of Facebook and Twitter, that caught the imagination of Obama's own base.
The Beloved Leader's fumbling response to the protests, refusing to
initially condemn the Iranian government, only demonstrated how little
influence Obama had, and his inability to use it for
good.

Mainstreaming Iran now has to go on hold, itself a disaster
for many of Obama's appointees who were hoping to demonstrate the uses of
soft power, who now have to wince and answer questions about whether
Ahmadinejad is the legitimate leader of Iran, and the US position on human
rights violations-- topics that were supposed to be off the
table.

To even it all out, the Obama Administration leaped forward
in defense of Honduras' left wing mini-Chavez leader, Zelaya, after his
own Supreme Court and Congress removed him from power. This give rise to
Obama displaying exactly the kind of overbearing bullying that he had
promised an end to during his campaign. All without actually demonstrating
any real understanding of the situation on the ground.

This of
course does not complete the list of failures abroad, from being openly
mocked on his Russian visit, snubbed by the Saudis, and dismissed by
Sarkozy and Merkel; it is widely clear that Obama has impressed no one on
his endless world tour. Like a visiting rock star, Obama has dragged his
entourage from one high profile performance to another-- without being
able to a point to a single thing that his music-free concerts have
actually accomplished.

Meanwhile on defense the surge in
Afghanistan has failed to deliver the kind of dramatic results that the
Iraq surge did. Obama's attempt to co-opt a successful Bush Administration
policy has yielded no results, and clashes between Obama's real number 2,
NSC head James L. Jones, and Secretary of Defense Gates and CIA Chief Leon
Panetta, have demonstrated that the non-traditional power structure of the
Obama administration which shifts power away from cabinet appointees, in
favor of non-cabinet members is not working.

Trying to govern from the NSC and an endless list of
Czars, rather than the Senate ratified Cabinet members, has given the
Obama administration a blatantly undemocratic and illegal policymaking
structure that seeks to subvert the checks and balances of congressional
authority. This has only fed tension with congress and the perception that
Obama does not like to play by the rules, and that his administration
rejects accountability and transparency.

And once again, Obama is
unable to point to any achievements or triumphs gained by using
non-traditional governmental structures. Nor has he achieved any goals by
working outside of congressional authority, and sidelining his own Cabinet
members, in favor of Saudi stooges like James L. Jones.

Obama has
certainly brought the change and the hope, but the change has not
benefited the general public that had placed high hopes in him. Abroad and
at home, Obama is a failure after only six months. He has succeeded at
doing only thing, spending more money in less time than any US government
official since World War II. This is of course a rather dubious
accomplishment as well.

Now the six month implosion is here, and
Obama looks worse than ever.