http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/387666/obama-credibility-gap-john-fund Obama at the Credibility Gap
By John Fund
September 10, 2014 9:53 PM
Rarely has a president faced a greater challenge in establishing his credibility for a new foreign-policy move than Barack Obama did in his nationally televised speech tonight.
A CNN poll earlier this week found that just 30 percent of voters thought Obama had presented a clear plan for fighting the Islamic State. While Obama now pledges to ask Congress to train and aid Syrian rebels who would fight the group, voters remember that he backed similar plans in Syria in 2013, when his advisers saw Syrian president Bashar Assad as the major threat.
The new Fox News poll out today has more troubling news about the state of Obama’s credibility on foreign policy. Only 34 percent of those surveyed approve of Obama’s handling of foreign policy and 59 percent think the U.S. is less respected today than when Obama took office. Among independents, a key voting group that will swing this year’s midterm election, a full 67 percent feel the U.S. is less respected. Even 35 percent of Democrats now agree the U.S. has lost respect, compared with just 20 percent who think the U.S. is more respected.
Even worse for Obama, an increasing number of voters no longer take him seriously on foreign policy. An astonishing 55 percent of voters say they feel embarrassed that Obama hasn’t articulated a strategy to combat the Islamic State until now. Obama’s plan to combat the group using air power and surrogate forces on the ground generates some skepticism. “By nearly two-to-one, voters think it will take boots on the ground to defeat ISIS (51 percent) rather than airstrikes alone,” reports Fox News pollster Dana Blanton.
The Washington foreign-policy community is taking a wait-and-see attitude on whether Obama’s rhetorical resolve will be backed up with serious implementation. An article on Politico notes that Obama has never given a prime-time speech on Russian’s aggression in Ukraine “even though its actions against Ukraine have created bigger worries for foreign-policy experts.”
“Last year, when [Obama] came onto national television to decry the use of chemical weapons [in Syria] but announce that, well, actually, in the end, he wouldn’t be doing much of anything, he projected a sense of indecisiveness that hung over him for weeks,” the D.C. publication wrote.
So, post-speech, it’s increasingly clear that President Obama’s first challenge is to simply get the American people to take him seriously. That challenge is far bigger than it should be.
