The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.Read the whole thing here.
The grizzled veterans of the Democratic leadership in Congress have found Mr Obama and his team of bright young advisers a pushover.
His free trade credentials are increasingly tarnished too.
Even good moves are ruined by bad presentation.
Mr Obama's public image rests increasingly heavily on his extraordinary speechifying abilities.
But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty - calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values - but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did "Change you can believe in" – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?
The man who has run nothing more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out of his depth in the world's top job. His credibility is seeping away, and it will require concrete achievements rather than more soaring oratory to recover it.
Amen! Although I would quibble with one thing. I never found his speeches particularly inspiring, but then I'm not sixteen years old or a Democrat partisan.
