Noonan: Obama in Trouble

Pictures of Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor will become an iconic image of his "amateurish" presidency unless he can "right his ship," writes Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal. Obama's support in both the Democratic-journalist establishment and the foreign-policy establishment is eroding, writes Noonan, basing her observation in part on a "fiery denunciation" of the administration by the "often sympathetic" journalist Elizabeth Drew. The columnist also draws evidence from The Daily Beast's Leslie Gelb, who wrote on the site last week that Obama's Asia trip had been a failure and his Afghanistan review "inexcusably clumsy." Noonan agrees with Gelb that Obama should listen to "the voices of experience" of those who have managed American foreign policy successfully in past, but goes on to bemoan the dearth of "wise men." In any event, Obama should be worried: "You can get tagged, typed and pegged in your first year," she writes. "The first year is when indelible impressions are made and iconic photos emerge."