Quote of the Day: Obama's Egypt Speech

There have been various analyses already such as this and this, but from the latter comes this piquant summation:

I asked a former Middle East hand if there was something new here. He replied, "Nothing." Why a nothing speech, then? He answered, "My interpretation is that this is an effort to claim credit. That's why he went immediately after Mubarak. They [the Obama advisers] know they muffed it and missed it and blew it -- so the empty remarks are an effort to establish a counter narrative." 

In any other administration, you'd think such an assessment harsh. But remember, this is an administration that views Egypt's revolution as a PR problem. And Obama isn't winning the PR game on this one, not domestically and certainly not internationally. I think the Middle East hand nailed it: The Obama team, after assuring us it didn't much care about the outcome in Egypt, is now, in the vaguest possible terms, trying to say that it was instrumental all along. Except it wasn't. 

Oh, my.  I've been been heavily critical of the Obama Administration's foreign policy (i.e., it doesn't seem to have a serious clue ... and is John Bolton actually right?  Heaven help us all if he is).  Worse, it's becoming increasingly evident that the feckless, naive, reactive approach is obvious to .... well, just about everybody.