BRITAIN

BRITAIN

The Telegraph, London, Jan. 19: The hopes invested in Barack Obama at his inauguration were as overblown as the disenchantment that now surrounds his first anniversary in the White House. He has failed, inevitably, to live up to the electrifying standards of his campaign rhetoric. Mario Cuomo, the former governor of New York, once observed that “you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose,” and that has been truer for Obama than for most of his predecessors. Yet to write off his first year as a failure would be absurdly harsh. It has been disappointing, maybe, but no disgrace.

Symbolic significance

In assessing his performance, we must remember the enormous symbolic significance of his election to the highest office in the United States. It went some way toward rectifying what Condoleezza Rice, another high-achieving black politician, has described as “America’s birth defect.” Nor should we forget what an appalling hand Obama was dealt. The legacy of the Bush years two wars and an economic collapse could hardly have been more poisonous.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Khaleej Times, Dubai, Jan. 20: Barack Obama completes his first year in the White House today, and it’s hard to resist the temptation of rushing in with the verdict on his performance. However, given the extraordinary challenges this U.S. president has faced even before he walked into the White House, it is more complicated than summing it up as success or failure.

Mindboggling mess

One year is perhaps too short a period to judge a president who has inherited a mindboggling mess at home and abroad. But judged Obama will be, especially in the Middle East where his unusual background and his powerful message of change have kindled unprecedented hopes and expectations. And the hopes and expectations about finally bringing peace to the Middle East haven’t just swept the region but captured the imagination of the world at large.

The U.S. ally and biggest recipient of U.S. aid has been openly defying and mocking Obama by expanding Jewish settlements on what little remains of the Palestinian land. Even that charade of “peace talks” is over. And Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, seems to have given up after numerous futile trips to the region. This must change if Obama wants to be remembered as a successful leader.