WHAT'S NEEDED IS NOT A SPECIFIC MOVE ON THE CHESSBOARD, BUT A DIFFERENT PLAYER

On Monday, Governor Mitt Romney published an article in the Wall Street Journal, which was titled "The Price of Failed Leadership." He described several examples of how the President's poor timing resulted in poor outcomes for the United States, and concluded:

Able leaders anticipate events, prepare for them, and act in time to shape them. My career in business and politics has exposed me to scores of people in leadership positions, only a few of whom actually have these qualities. Some simply cannot envision the future and are thus unpleasantly surprised when it arrives. Some simply hope for the best. Others succumb to analysis paralysis, weighing trends and forecasts and choices beyond the time of opportunity. 

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton traveled the world in pursuit of their promise to reset relations and to build friendships across the globe. Their failure has been painfully evident: It is hard to name even a single country that has more respect and admiration for America today than when President Obama took office, and now Russia is in Ukraine. Part of their failure, I submit, is due to their failure to act when action was possible, and needed.

The "twitchy" site has recorded a large number of "tweets," in which members of the Obamaholic community responded, mainly by demanding that Governor Romney provide specific actions that would now remedy the disasters that Obama's incompetence has produced. The post is called, "Lapdogs, unite! Obama’s ‘team of merry manchildren’ mocks Romney Russia op-ed."

Obama's manchildren are in fact missing the point. Governor Romney pointed out a number of things that could have been done - at the right time - to avert some of these problems.

But the problem is not really one of specific mistakes or missteps. The problem with the Obama maladministration's foreign policy is that it is a series of repeated mistakes that as a whole have conveyed the message that America is a weak, ineffectual, helpless country, and that no antagonistic power in the world, whether great or small, need be at all concerned about any consequences that might follow their misbehavior.

At this point, specific other things that Obama might do to contain an awakening Russian giant are not really the issue. Behind whatever moves Obama might take, the world perceives a weak and cowardly appeaser. That is the problem. And of course the reason that the world perceives that Obama is weak and cowardly, is that his actions are repeatedly weak and cowardly.

Unless of course you are beginning to think that everything Obama does is intentionally designed to weaken America and strengthen communist and jihadist tyrannies around the world. In which case, what he is doing as President of the United States - hollowing out the armed forces, cashiering our most experienced and successful combat commanders, kowtowing to Iran, Russia, China, and Al Qaeda, crippling the American economy - is actually rather bold.