Barack Obama smugly addressed the crowds in Iowa, just days after signing his “signature” legislation, affectionately called ObamaCare. He was in Iowa to “sell” his ObamaCare vision, but not as the leader of this great nation, but as the forever candidate on the campaign trail. He belittled and taunted his healthcare opponents, daring them to run in November on the platform of repealing the ObamaCare.

     Touted as being mere boys trying to play in the men’s club, the Obama team has shown, after 14 months, that running one of the greatest campaigns in our history does NOT translate to being effective executives once in control.

    Despite that, Obama had his two wins this week:

Two big wins for Barack Obama at home and abroad — a historic health care bill and a new arms treaty with Russia — have injected sudden momentum into a presidency that had been looking beleaguered.

“What a week here,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on his twitter feed, as Obama concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday.

In six days, two of the biggest projects of Obama’s presidency came to fruition after months of painstaking work, transforming the image of an administration that had swung hard but failed to connect on big agenda items.

      But with these wins comes greater responsibility, the responsibility on how to handle the success while not appearing to gloat at the success. So then consider the manner in which Obama treated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his White House visit on Tuesday evening. No press, no photo, and in the middle of the discussion, Obama leaves the Prime Minister for an hour to have dinner with the family. As someone who has had to address his Muslim heritage, including his bows to Muslim leaders like the Saudi’s, one would think that Obama would make a far greater effort to embrace our close ties with our great Mideast ally, Israel.

And the lofty idea that Obama’s hope-fueled politics, huge popularity, exotic biography, later enhanced by a Nobel Peace Prize, could resolve the world’s most testing conflicts had already proven fanciful.

Statesmanship is also no guarantee of domestic success at home — just ask ex-president George H.W. Bush, turfed out of office in an economic downturn after engineering a soft landing for the Cold War and evicting Iraq from Kuwait.

A toxic political climate at home could prove limiting for Obama: his bitterly-won health care victory deepened the polarization of US politics, making prospects for future legislative successes uncertain.

His political fate, like those of his recent predecessors, may depend on the pace of economic growth and job creation, with unemployment at 9.7 percent.

Economic misery and its impact on Obama’s popularity — currently below 50 percent in most polls — will also drive mid-term congressional elections in November, in which Democrats fear big losses.

And perilous issues loom — like the delayed closure of trials for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the struggle to enact financial reform — that could also dim the president’s new political luster.

     What Obama does from this point is unclear. If his actions thus far are any indication, arrogance will prevail over leadership!

for full article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100326/pl_afp/uspoliticsrussianuclearobama

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