Obama's Credibility Is
Melting
Here and abroad, Obama's partners are
concluding they cannot trust him.
By Daniel Henninger of
the Wall Street Journal
From the moment he
emerged in the public eye with his 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention and
through his astonishing defeat of the Clintons in 2008, Barack Obama's calling
card has been credibility. He speaks, and enough of the world believes to keep
his presidency afloat. Or used to.
All of a sudden, from
Washington to Riyadh, Barack Obama's credibility is melting.
Amid the predictable
collapse the past week of HealthCare.gov's too-complex technology, not enough
notice was given to Sen. Marco Rubio's statement that the chances for success on
immigration reform are about dead. Why? Because, said Sen. Rubio, there is
"a lack of trust" in the president's commitments.
"This notion that
they're going to get in a room and negotiate a deal with the president on
immigration," Sen. Rubio said Sunday on Fox News, "is much more
difficult to do" after the shutdown negotiations of the past three weeks.
Sen. Rubio said he and
other reform participants, such as Idaho's Rep. Raul Labrador, are afraid that
if they cut an immigration deal with the White House—say, offering a path to
citizenship in return for strong enforcement of any new law—Mr. Obama will
desert them by reneging on the enforcement.
When belief in the
average politician's word diminishes, the political world marks him down and
moves away. With the president of the United States, especially one in his
second term, the costs of the credibility markdown become immeasurably greater.
Ask the Saudis.
Last weekend the
diplomatic world was agog at the refusal of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to
accept a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Global disbelief gave way fast to
clear understanding: The Saudis have decided that the United States is no
longer a reliable partner in Middle Eastern affairs.
The Saudi king, who
supported Syria's anti-Assad rebels early, before Islamic jihadists polluted
the coalition, watched Mr. Obama's red line over Assad's use of chemical
weapons disappear into an about-face deal with Vladimir Putin. The next time
King Abdullah looked up, Mr. Obama was hanging the Saudis out to dry yet again
by phoning up Iran's President Hasan Rouhani, Assad's primary banker and
armorer, to chase a deal on nuclear weapons. Within days, Saudi Arabia's
intelligence chief, Prince Bandar, let it be known that the Saudis intend to
distance themselves from the U.S.
What is at issue here
is not some sacred moral value, such as "In God We Trust." Domestic
politics or the affairs of nations are not an avocation for angels. But the
coin of this imperfect realm is credibility. Sydney Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman
explained the terms of trade in "The Maltese Falcon": "I must
tell you what I know, but you won't tell me what you know. That is hardly equitable,
sir. I don't think we can do business along those lines."
Bluntly, Mr. Obama's
partners are concluding that they cannot do business with him. They don't trust
him. Whether it's the Saudis, the Syrian rebels, the French, the Iraqis, the
unpivoted Asians or the congressional Republicans, they've all had their fill
of coming up on the short end with so mercurial a U.S. president. And when that
happens, the world's important business doesn't get done. It sits in a
dangerous and volatile vacuum.
The next major
political event in Washington is the negotiation over spending, entitlements
and taxes between House budget chairman Paul
Ryan and his Senate
partner, Patty Murray. The bad air over this effort is the same as that Marco
Rubio says is choking immigration reform: the fear that Mr. Obama will urge the
process forward in public and then blow up any Ryan-Murray agreement at the
11th hour with deal-killing demands for greater tax revenue.
Then there is Mr.
Obama's bond with the American people, which is diminishing with the failed
rollout of the Affordable
Care Act. ObamaCare is the central processing unit of the Obama
presidency's belief system. Now the believers are wondering why the
administration suppressed knowledge of the huge program's problems when hundreds
of tech workers for the project had to know this mess would happen Oct. 1.
Rather than level with
the public, the government's most senior health-care official, Kathleen
Sebelius, spent days spewing ludicrous and incredible happy talk about the
failure, while refusing to provide basic information about its cause.
Voters don't normally
accord politicians unworldly levels of belief, but it has been Barack Obama's
gift to transform mere support into victorious credulousness. Now that is
crumbling, at great cost. If here and abroad, politicians, the public and the
press conclude that Mr. Obama can't play it straight, his second-term
accomplishments will lie only in doing business with the world's most cynical,
untrustworthy partners. The American people are the ones who will end up on the
short end of those deals.
Poster's comment:
Trust, faith, and confidence are more than
mere words.
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