Editorial: Obama’s rapid hope loss

Well, Mr. President, it was good while it lasted. But this week transformed our patient,… Well, Mr. President, it was good while it lasted. But this week transformed our patient, moon-eyed gaze into an expectant glare. The trip across Asia demonstrated the United States’ declining global influence, and that does not leave much optimism for domestic matters.

When voters, including many college students, elected President Barack Obama, many thought they were creating the Utopian States of America. The new USA would bring health care to all citizens, regain lost prestige on the world stage and summon Captain Planet to save a wheezing Earth.

One year later, the Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook not so good.”

Today is the 146th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. If Obama ever wants to scratch the legacy of his presidential idol, he needs to work a little harder.

The United States has waning clout overseas, and, both domestically and internationally, Obama has been deflated on issue after issue — but never worse than this week in China.

He foolishly snubbed the Dalai Lama in hopes of setting a good tone for negotiations with Chinese president Hu Jintao. According to The New York Times, Obama avoided contact with “Chinese liberals, free press advocates and even average Chinese.”

These are the acts of a president who knows the United States does not have much leverage left. Yet for all these concessions, Obama did not get any tangible results from his talk with Jintao. Realistically, China doesn’t have to give the United States anything, because the United States owes China a lot of money for two wars, bailouts, stimuli, tax cuts and more. The national debt at press time was $12 trillion, according to U.S. Debt Clock.

Earlier in the week, Japan called for “more equal” relations with the United States and a relocation of Marines stationed in Okinawa.

Meanwhile, Obama admitted that the Guantanamo Bay prisoner facility will not be closed by January, his original deadline for closure. Iran is now refusing to send uranium abroad for enrichment, defying a deal negotiated with the United States. Israel is ignoring the White House and expanding settlements, and senators in Obama’s own party are planning to block debate on health care.

The one thing Obama and world leaders agreed upon was that they wouldn’t agree on anything binding at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

It’s been a bad year.

Obama is losing prestige fast — the Gallup daily tracking poll shows that his approval rating dropped from 68 percent in January to 50 percent currently. This is going to make every policy objective much harder to accomplish.

However, the blame cannot be placed solely on Obama. He can’t sign legislation that Congress doesn’t send to him. The debts and obligations were run up before his inauguration. The United States has been getting weaker — a decline exacerbated by an exhausted military and lingering recession — and now other countries are piling on.

Considering Obama was handed the Oval Office keys with a roll of duct tape, he is doing an adequate job.

A bigger problem is that student voters got hyper-hoped. We overdosed and now we’re crashing.

Obama promised many lofty accomplishments in a short time span, and such massive progression was never going to happen immediately. Citizens should not be mad that Obama is breaking promises, but much like the moral in a “West Wing” episode, they should be mad that Obama made promises he could never keep.

And anyone who believed the campaign rhetoric should be mad at themselves for falling for it.