Obama’s ‘Major’ Speech on Arab World Hurt by Lofty Expectations
Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish/Daily Beast:
What to say? It strikes me as a classic example of
Obama’s community organizer past, except the community he is now attempting to organize is the maelstrom of passions and pathologies that define the Middle East …. He seems to capture the classic Obama tendency to see all sides, in a reflection of his unique Third Culture Kid capacity. And if he is leading, it is from behind, with an almost pathological pragmatism, combined with these periodic oratorical framing devices..
Jackson Diehl, PostPartisan/Washington Post:
President Obama’s Middle East speech contained a surprising amount of specificity — and in that, some real steel. Not just U.S. adversaries, such as Syria and Iran, but friends, such as Bahrain and Israel, were singled out for presidential pointers that will leave their leaders smarting…