Obama: Wimp or warrior?

The NY Times has stirred the pot by asking this question on the front page of its latest Week in Review. Bob Stein suggests this is just a tread-worn conservative talking point with no merit to speak of.

Yet strangely, the Times didn’t even bother to ask any actual conservatives whether Obama has gone soft. Instead, prominent liberals provided the necessary grist for the mill:

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the Daily Beast blog two weeks ago that Mr. Obama needs to toughen up with his adversaries. “He puts far too much store on being the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “He’d do well to remember that Jimmy Carter also rang all the I.Q. bells.”…

For the White House, 2009 was a year of emphasizing a departure from the blunter foreign policy style of President Bush, of projecting that America could offer an unclenched fist (Iran), push the reset button (Russia) and proclaim that it was moving to a policy that focused not only on guns but also offered butter (Pakistan).

But now, 2010 “will be about achieving some results there,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress and a Democrat. “They’re going to need to demonstrate a set of tangible successes that’s not just a set of speeches.”…

“The biggest vulnerability that he’s got is that he said all that stuff about engagement and the outstretched hand, that he looks naïve if he discovers that other people don’t reciprocate,” said Stephen Sestanovich, Clinton administration ambassador-at-large to the former Soviet Union who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dick Cheney may as well take a long vacation in Hawaii.