Sympathy for the decider

J. Scott Carpenter and Dina Guirguis take the Obama administration to task for not fulfilling most of the promises Obama made in his Cairo speech one year ago, specifically on democracy, economic development, women’s rights, religious freedom, and countering terrorism. While they are correct in the narrow sense that the administration has not made much progress on these issues, I think its perhaps an unfair criticism. The administration is dealing from a host of difficult problems, from Afghanistan to the economic crisis to the largest oil spill in the history of the US. The administration has largely been in reactive mode since it took office, not by choice, but because of a non-stop series of crises. The administration appears to have more fires than fire trucks. Its not as if Obama is sitting around the White House playing solitaire on his computer. I can understand why the administration has made little progress in advancing a lot of its goals and find it difficult to fault them in many of these areas.

Michael Allen at Democracy Digest is less sympathetic.