The Obama administration has had a parade of abject failures in international politics. The initial ones could be rationalized away: Libya, the Arab Spring, the Russian reset.
Starting around the time of the Syrian crisis, it became obvious that the administration was blundering badly.
The Iranian negotiations continued to be fruitless.
Boko Haram was partially the result of the Libyan failure, and was one more data point proving that AQ was not dead, but spreading.
The latest and greatest blunder was Ukraine. The parallels between that conflict and the Sudetenland crisis are obvious to everybody, and Obama put himself comfortably in the role of Chamberlain.

I think the left is losing faith because Obama is inviting the ridicule of the rest of the world. They’re laughing at us, and that’s the one thing liberals cannot tolerate.

Note that for her part in this, Hillary will be blamed, too. Her poll numbers seem to be coming down already.

I also agree with southpaw, and was going to make the same point: if amnesty passes, it won’t be due to anything Obama has done. Not so much a “victory” on his part as a surrender on ours.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/this-is-another-type-of-warfare

JFK had a better handle on today’s challenges over 50 years ago than the current president.

Surprise. Apparently this morning at the non-firing of VA Sec Shinseki, Obama revealed that the problems at the VA pre-dated his Administration. Who knew? I guess he did not, even though he campaigned that he would fix those problems.

One last thought about our Leader. I read today that we need not worry that the GDP retreated in the 1st qtr; it was all because of the terribly cold winter. Who knew that winter would be cold this year? Apparently not the President, because he was berating the Nation that we would destroy the world if we did not change our life style and arrest Global Warming.

Yep.

Beyond the domestic scandals, within the scope of foreign affairs, the media glossed over that the al Qaeda and Saddam problems matured on Clinton’s watch. Which is not to blame Clinton for them. However, it does mean Bush inherited the problems and reacted to 9/11 by faithfully carrying forward Clinton’s counter-terror and Iraq policies for those problems.

Furthermore, Clinton endorsed Bush on Iraq through at least 2004 by referring to Clinton’s own presidential experience and case versus Saddam, before Clinton adopted the Dems’ false narrative with a 180 degree flip that included brazen lies about his own recent position.

Despite making the flip from honest integrity to lie out in the open, Clinton was passed by the media in order to boost the false narrative on Bush and OIF.

The activist game is adversarial, not inquisitorial. It isn’t HS debate club. It’s military maneuver.

So, it’s not enough to hold the Dems, Left, and their allied media up to their prior narrative frame and their own rules. They’re too elastic. Instead, you must reframe. The opposition must be compelled to be, move, and react inside your narrative frame and play by your rules.

With the binary political choice, keep in mind the Dems’ pegging defense strategy by which Obama can afford to disappoint as long as the GOP is automatically pegged as worse, which in the scope of foreign affairs, relies on the fundamental assumed premise of strawman-Bush.

The pegging defense needs to be broken.

Therefore, the critical missing piece in Neo’s observation of discontent over Obama’s foreign affairs is a rehabilitation of Bush’s legacy that counters the fundamental premise that ‘no matter what, Bush (on foreign policy) was worse’, particularly regarding Iraq.

To flip the binary positions, it’s not enough to discuss disappointment with Obama. In order to break the Dems’ pegging defense, It needs to be established explicitly in the popular narrative that Bush was right and Obama’s deviations from Bush have been harmful.

Once reframed, then it can be emphasized that the Dems lied about Bush and because of changing course from Bush, Obama has harmed our international position and all who rely on robust American leadership. Correct the premise and we can begin trying to re-right our foreign policy.

It’s inaccurate to imply that Richard Engel has been a cheerleader for Obama’s foreign policy, at least for the last 2 years. Example:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/07/13686562-the-arab-spring-is-dead-and-syria-is-writing-its-obituary

I wrote on my blog regarding Engel’s column:

ABC’s Richard Engel provides a thumbnail sketch of the anti-liberal course of the Middle East since the Arab Spring and concludes, “What happens if the [sic] Washington continues to watch from afar?”

However, Engel undermines his question by sidestepping a thoughtful exploration of the hard choices we face there. Engel only implies the bad-or-worse nature of our options in the Middle East with his premise that the liberal promises of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Arab Spring have drowned in the region’s religious tribal contests. Engel also warns that al Qaeda has been damaged but not defeated, which means the al Qaeda cancer remains dangerous. He refers to the American tactical victory over al Qaeda in Iraq and our broader tactical success combating al Qaeda, but then warns of the dangers of alienating Sunnis and al Qaeda’s intelligent ‘shifting antigen’ adaptive capability. Engel argues local American commitment hurts al Qaeda, while American absence allows openings for al Qaeda to make inroads with the anti-government forces, such as the reformed tactics al Qaeda is now employing in Syria.

I’d say that the left believed that Obama could truly deliver on his promises. They still believe that utopia can be legislated and engineered. That stubborn thing called reality is now getting in the way — you can only believe so long without any positive results.

My thoughts are we’re about to see a shift in gears. You know, the old “if we only had more money (the stimulus just wasn’t large enough),” except this argument will mean that the theory is still sound, Obama just couldn’t overcome the obstacles of (among other things) the obstructionist Republicans.

Now the next step will be that since the theory is still sound “. . . Hillary will be able to do precisely what Obama could not. After all Bill worked with the Republicans.” Wait for it . . . in 3 – 2 – 1 . . .