Next week, President Obama will attend the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, during which he will also squeeze in a quick trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize and deliver the laureate's lecture. Two weeks ago, Obama made his first visit to Asia, stopping in Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea. In Singapore, Obama met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a side session, during which he announced that negotiators would almost certainly not make the deadline to agree to a replacement of START II, the nuclear disarmament treaty signed by the United States and Russia initially in 1993. After that minor announcement, Obama was off to China for press conferences and photo-ops.
Obama has traveled more extensively and more frequently at this point in his term than any other president in U.S. history -- eight trips covering 20 countries, with a ninth and tenth upcoming. While Obama travels in the name of a new diplomacy, his political agenda markedly languishes. His presidency has developed little political direction during the administration's critical first year. He has traveled around the world and at the same time sought to slow economic degradation at home while fixating on health care and mulling over an Afghanistan policy, all the while making speeches but accomplishing few policy initiatives abroad. His lack of effectiveness internationally was apparent in China, where not a single concrete policy objective was achieved. In trying to accomplish everything, he is accomplishing little -- and the American people are suffering as a result.
Obama will take a break from international travel tomorrow to sit down with business leaders in Washington, D.C. to figure out how best to curtail what has become the major problem facing his presidency -- a 10.2 percent national unemployment rate. But shortly thereafter, he will be bound for Copenhagen. His constant globetrotting stymies his ability to engage the critical issues in anything beyond a cursory manner. In reality, only two major issues currently face the Obama administration -- all else is superfluous, proverbial icing on the cake. Economic recovery and job creation are together the single most important issue, followed closely by defense -- namely as regards Afghanistan and Pakistan, or AfPak, but also nuclear proliferation and START's termination. Obama took a big step toward solidifying a coherent AfPak strategy last night with his speech, but strides remain to be taken.
Domestically, Obama needs to create jobs -- now. Claims that Obama's stimulus package has created or saved 640,000 jobs so far are curious, considering that unemployment has climbed to 10.2 percent from 7.2 percent on Inauguration Day. The $250 billion of the stimulus for infrastructure -- intended to be the real job creator -- has done little; the bill itself has frozen large quantities of cash until 2011, reduced the allotment for infrastructure repairs to all but a select number of highways, and effected no significant private-sector job creation. A misguided fixation on health care won't help, either -- public health care in 2013, for which the government has yet to find a way to pay, doesn't change the fact that millions of Americans are jobless today, or tomorrow for that matter.
Obama defenders may argue that he is merely repairing the diplomatic detritus George W. Bush left behind and that Obama's sweeping international travel is justified. Diplomacy certainly has its place in politics, but today's 15.7 million jobless Americans don't particularly care about global carbon emissions or human rights in China, nor should they. If Obama is truly concerned with changing America for the better, he'll put Air Force One in the hangar and put the kibosh on international travel for awhile. Ultimately, as he accepts his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Obama would be well-served to remember those 15.7 million Americans whom his prize-winning politics have left out in the cold this holiday season.
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Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts "The Rundown," a news and sports talk show that airs from 3 to 5 p.m. every Friday on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.
