And The Solution Is?

"I've had two successors since I left the White House -- Bush and Obama -- and I've heard more from Bush, asking for my advice than I've heard from Obama ... Obama doesn't know how to be president. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent ... Barack Obama is an amateur."
former U.S. President Bill Clinton

Well, oops. How unfortunate. Private conversations sometimes have a habit of leaking their boundaries. It isn't all that surprising, however, one might assume, that a former president might have little confidence in a successor. Everyone has their own way of managing affairs. Even those who share allegiance to the same political party. In the public arena, they are solidly supportive of one another. In private, out come the verbal knives.

The advent of America voting for a black American -- biracial perhaps, but unambiguously black -- to assume the seat of administrative executive power in the country might have been considered at one time of being unthinkable. Or, if possible, at some time in the far distant future. The future just happened in 2009. Not only were Americans who were entranced by the prospect and the man and his ambiguous promises delighted with themselves, but so too was the international community.

So delighted, in fact, that before he managed to deliver anything of moment on the international scene, let alone domestically, he was nominated for the grandest validating prize of all and became a Nobel Laureate. How much better does life get? A patrician black intellectual just relatively recently having entered politics in that most political of states as a Senator leap-frogs into the presidency.

Just a year previously the public expressed great consternation when asked if they knew who Barack Obama was in a poll. While the question was about Barack Obama, most people distinctly heard "Osama bin-Laden", and responded accordingly. Most certainly they knew who Obama bin-Laden was, the unspeakable savage.

And then America voted for Barack Hussein Obama. His wife beamed; the United States of America after all, was a country she could be proud of. And the United States of America was, largely, proud of her.  Her sangfroid and classy wardrobe, their unsurprisingly beautiful children, and their obvious commitment to one another represented an American Dream Come True. And more power to them.

Except that Mr. President's critics insist he is not exercising the power granted him in a manner compatible with their expectations. His leadership both at home and abroad has been, despite the prodigious efforts he and his party have made in Congress and the Senate, let alone on the international scene, has been rather lackadaisical. Lacking in force and commitment.

He does not take advice. Oh, he does, but not from the sources he might. Or, perhaps, ought.

The advice he takes from sources held in great suspicion by many segments of the American society appears to have led him down a kind of garden path of apathetic non-intervention when his country is still expected to comport itself in a manner reflective of the world's still-only superpower, however much it has been reduced during his stay.