Who can blame the Iranians for thinking they have Mr. Obama's number? The more that soft diplomacy doesn't work, the softer diplomacy becomes. Robert M. Gates, the president's defense secretary, says he's sure Mr. Ahmadinejad intends to build nuclear weapons, but he doesn't know what anyone can do about it except talk some more. "The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time." (But when that time runs out, couldn't the military just buy some more?)There are signs that the Europeans, so eager only a year ago to march to the music of the piper from Hyde Park, are sobering up like the millions of independent voters who have stepped out of the parade in America. The buzz about Barack Obama at international conferences is no longer about how strong and artful he is in the presidential role, but how naive and artless reality has revealed him to be. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is said to have told confidants that he thinks the American president is "weak."
Clark Judge, a recent delegate to the annual Global Security Review conference in Geneva, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was surprised by the emerging "wide skepticism" of the president. "The impression emerged for me," he says, "that Mr. Obama's riveting rhetoric is in danger of turning from a plus to a minus." One former foreign minister scorns the president's "pointless rhetoric, no matter how elegantly expressed."
Reality is an unforgiving teacher, and inevitably grades on a steep curve. Mr. Obama imagined last year that he was auditioning to replace Martin Sheen on the television serial "West Wing." He's learning better now.