The President Looks Inward

Ted Bromund / January 28, 2010

In publicizing the President’s State of the Union address, Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett announced that one of the achievements of which the administration was most proud in its first year in office was its action to repair “badly frayed global alliances” and “to restore America’s leadership in the world.” That leadership was not much in evidence in the President’s speech, which is only fitting, because it has been lacking in reality as well.

The President name-checked the obvious foreign crises. Haiti, predictably, took pride of place, and here, at least, the administration does have something to be proud of. Its response is no more than previous administrations would have done, and it comes after the U.S. defaulted on leadership by turning the management of Haiti over to the UN in the mid-1990s, but it was prompt and substantial.

Some on the left, predictably, have criticized the President for his action, but in an otherwise gloomy year for American leadership, it was a response worthy of the applause it received. (more…)