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Read "Republican Wins Show Dems They Are on Their...
...tough moment for Clinton, playing second fiddle at the Bibi-does-Gandhi show. President Barack Obama had softened his language on the settlements a few weeks earlier: instead of a total freeze, he had talked about Israeli "restraint" in settlement-building. And now Clinton seemed to cement the Administration's retreat, agreeing that Netanyahu's proposal was, indeed, "unprecedented," even though the U.S. still favored a total freeze. The most important thing, she added, was for the parties to get to the table as quickly as possible. The onus was back on the Palestinians - and the Palestinians quickly expressed outrage...
...news was that Clinton allowed herself to be hammered with hostile questions from students, talk-show hosts and Pashtun elders - and that, on occasion, she pushed back, raising incredibly sensitive issues, like why no one in the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was, even though he had been in the country since 2002. Press accounts either emphasized the embarrassment of a Secretary of State's getting pummeled or fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image...
...White House argues that some progress has been made: Iran is on the defensive, and North Korea has said it will return to the six-party talks. Clinton argues, correctly, about the need for "strategic patience." But the only thing Obama really has to show for his efforts so far is a Nobel Prize for Potential and - no small thing - the wisdom to have refrained from doing anything so wildly stupid as invading Iraq. The President has been willing to use military force - the Predator drones that have decimated al-Qaeda's leadership testify to his lack of squeamishness...
There is also a growing sense that the President's inexperience is beginning to show - not in his overall policy, which represents the views of a broad, moderate national-security consensus ranging from Brent Scowcroft to John Kerry, but in his execution of the details. The Afghan strategy review has been too public and taken too long; the Middle East peace hunt has become a wild goose chase. A letter to Iran's Supreme Leader is a productive gesture only if it gets a response; if it doesn't, it seems weak and supplicatory. A call for the Israelis...