AND NOW FOR THE GROWN-UP WORLD - AT 7:35 A.M. ET:  The president is about to address the Turkish parliament.  This should really be rich, as Turkey is a Muslim country.  The opportunity for high grovel is so tempting.  The president has already bowed down physically to one Muslim leader, the king of Saudi Arabia, as you've seen in a widely circulated photo.  We can't wait to hear what honors are about to be bestowed on other aggrieved Muslims. 

This, from the Washington Post, should put the president's current excursion in Europe into some perspective:

As Obama prepared to address the Turkish parliament Monday, the U.N. Security Council met in an emergency session. Despite the urging of the United States and Japan, the 15-member council could not agree on a statement criticizing North Korea's rocket launch. China and Russia said they were not yet convinced that Pyongyang had violated any U.N. rules, according to council officials.

Remember all that palling around that Obama did with Russia's Medvedev last week?  Remember the smiles?  Remember the talk about "resetting" our relationship with Moscow?  Remember the pledge to start negotiating a new nuclear weapons treaty?  Remember the warmth and the good times?  Oh, and also the swell food.

Lot of good it did us.  The old reds won't even admit that North Korea broke any rules.  Security Council resolutions?  Did you see any resolutions?  Maybe the secretary-general's dog ate them.  That must be it.

We got stiffed at the UN yesterday.  North Korea didn't even get a slap on the wrist.  It serves as a metaphor for Mr. Obama's entire trip, with The One accompanied by 500 well-chosen staffers.  Sure, they loved him.  They loved Michelle.  They loved everybody.  They loved the plane.  And, in the end, we got very little, bordering on nothing.  NATO committed a closet full of troops to Afghanistan and said nice things.  But, even yesterday, French President Sarkozy rather bluntly told Mr. Obama to butt out of Europe's internal business after the president suggested that the European Union admit Turkey, a sensitive subject.  Angela Merkel joined in.  Even the warmth didn't outlive the trip.

When will some Americans learn that The Obamas' personal popularity will not translate into policy?  Nations have their own interests.  You can be invited to their party, but don't expect the keys to the kingdom.

In fact, the trip may backfire.  Rasmussen reports that, even after the media did its part, as a division of Obamaland, to portray the trip as sublime, Obama's poll numbers have not shot up at home.  Rasmussen also reported that a majority of Americans want a military response to North Korea, something the Ivy League crowd around Obama probably didn't expect.

I'm reminded of something that George Shultz, President Reagan's secretary of state, once said:  "Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table."  The president should mount that quote on his desk.  Throughout the trip he has appeared more the neophyte than the leader, more the apprentice than the president.  His trip came at a moment when the Pentagon is preparing widely publicized budget cuts.  It came at a moment when the phrase, "the war on terror," has been dropped from administration vocabulary.  It came at a moment when the administration flashes "weakness" rather than strength.  And, of course, the president spent an embarrassing amount of time this last week apologizing for America's sins, real or imagined, mostly imagined.  There was no shadow of power.  There was only the shadow of a kid playing in the sandbox.

Sure, I'm proud that we can show off our first African-American president.  And Michelle Obama conducted herself with great dignity.  Sure, I like it that crowds cheer a president, rather than boo him.  But these things are on the surface.  Europe despised Ronald Reagan, but he saved them and was the key figure in removing the Soviet threat.  The Europeans liked Bill Clinton, in part because they could sucker him into a war in the Balkans that Europe should have fought itself.  They loathed George W. Bush, but the America Europe depends on was kept safe by Mr. Bush, something his successor refuses to acknowledge.  Indeed, one waited for a single word from President Obama acknowledging the contributions of his predecessor, something that common sense should have dictated.  We continue to wait.

We noticed that the president has resorted to a speech style reminiscent of Ted Sorensen's speeches for Jack Kennedy.  I call it see-saw rhetoric.  You know it:  "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."  That sort of thing.  So, in his speech calling for nuclear disarmament, the president pledged this nation to that goal, but cautioned that, in the interim, he would not unilaterally disarm this country.  We want to disarm, but we won't do it alone.  Now, that's fine, but the key question is where the president's heart lies.  Will he be fierce in defending this nation, as Ronald Reagan was, or will he be faint-hearted, while negotiating questionable treaties?  No American president was more interested in arms control than was President Reagan - something not widely known.  But his interest marched side by side with the most significant strengthening of American defense that we saw during the Cold War.

Some say that Mr. Obama's approach, on bended knee, is simply a tactic, hiding real policies that are tougher.  Some even say that his actual policies are similar to those of George W. Bush.  I hope so.  The final judgment is certainly not in.  And we recall that Jack Kennedy's first year in office was marked by weakness and foreign failures, but that his second was far better.  However, I do hope the president realizes from this past week that campaigning and governing are entirely different, and that the road show will wear thin, especially here at home, in the absence of gains for the United States.  And he might, in his speeches, occasionally throw in words like "democracy," "victory" and, yes, even "Americanism," to remind foreign nations that his address is Washington, and not the world.

We await his address to the Turkish parliament. 

April 6, 2009