Obama Muddles Through

Jon Meacham: “In the new conventional wisdom, Obama is said to be conducting a weak foreign policy that is damaging U.S. prestige and power. Faced with criticism of his stewardship of our place in the world, moreover, the President has been portrayed as a self-absorbed whiner…. Obama is choosing limited action in many spheres because he believes that more expansive action may create more problems than it would solve. He is a pragmatist who has always been depicted, particularly by his opponents, as an ideologue…”

“Lord knows, we get things wrong–we have fought unwise wars, ignored the plights of persecuted peoples, sent contradictory signals–but by and large, generation in and generation out, we have, in British journalist and economist Walter Bagehot’s phrase, muddled through. The question now is whether Obama is muddling through in the manner of his better predecessors or is at once withdrawn and weak.”