2014 will be a worse year for Obama than 2013 was

Then there is the foreign affairs realm, where 2014 also looks to be worse than 2013. The Obamacare debacle did one useful thing for Obama: It drove the Syria debacle off the front pages. But Obama’s precipitous decline in the polls didn’t start with the Obamacare rollout; he was already slipping from the ineptitude displayed over Syria, where we went from “Syria Must Be Attacked!” to “Never Mind” in the space of three weeks. Obamacare — and the NSA spying scandals, and the ongoing drip-drip of the IRS and Benghazi scandals — has only made it worse. Obama is currently less popular than any postwar president except Richard Nixon at this stage in their terms.

Increasingly, Americans see him as a loser. But more importantly, he’s perceived by our friends and enemies abroad as weak and preoccupied. The Saudis are livid about our handling of Iran; needless to say, so are the Israelis. The Iranians clearly don’t take us seriously, and Vladimir Putin, who outfoxed Obama over Syria, is plainly unimpressed. The combination of distrust by our friends and disrespect from our enemies is a dangerous mix, and comes at an unsettled time that some scholars are comparing to the years before World War I. It’s a time when we need better than usual diplomacy, and that does not appear to be in the offing.