Obama the chess player

"President Obama gave a great speech in Jerusalem last week," the Philadelphia Inquirer's ordinarily astute foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin, wrote on Sunday. So powerful was Obama's rhetoric, Rubin said, "that it elicited repeated cheers from about 1,000 Israeli students in the audience."

Then she hastened to remind us: "One can't help but recall that Obama also gave a great speech to students in Cairo in 2009, aimed at winning Muslim hearts and minds. That speech is best remembered for failing to produce anything concrete."

I guess she's right. That 2009 speech failed to produce any momentous deals with the Arab world's ranking strong men: Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Khaddafi and Bashar al-Assad.

It did, however, plant the seeds of the "Arab Spring," which began in 2010— and thanks to which one of the three above-mentioned dictators was deposed, another was killed, and the third is clinging to the last shreds of his power.

A good hour's work

The "Arab Spring," which caught virtually every Western diplomat and pundit (including Rubin) by surprise, has thus far displaced governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, provoked civil uprisings in Bahrain and Syria, triggered major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Sudan; and spurred minor protests in Lebanon, Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti and Western Sahara.

Not a bad hour's work for a chat before students in a part of the world where private citizens— least of all students— were presumed to be uninterested in exercising political power.

In Jerusalem last week, for reasons that apparently eluded Rubin, Obama chose once again to speak to Israeli students rather than the Israeli Knesset. "By appealing to public opinion rather than to Israeli politicians," she concludes, "Obama indicated that he knows there is scant chance for serious negotiations…. Most likely, this speech will be recalled, like the one in Cairo, as another missed chance for positive change."

First since Nixon

If you're a journalist who looks for change within a 24-hour news cycle, she's right: Nothing has changed since Obama's Jerusalem speech. If you're a diplomat who believes yourself the center of the universe, it might well seem that nothing can happen in the Middle East without the Israeli Knesset.

But if you're a chess player— which Obama ought to be, if he isn't already— you perceive that change is not only possible in this world, it's inevitable. In that case, all you have to do is give it a little nudge, preferably to the energetic students at the bottom as opposed to the movers and shakers at the top.

After all, the man did pass a national health care bill when all of his predecessors since Nixon had tried and failed. And he won re-election overwhelmingly when most knowledgeable pundits had counted him out.

To Trudy Rubin, I offer this free advice: Before you next write about Obama, look in the mirror and repeat the mantra that I started chanting about five years ago: "Obama is smarter than I am, Obama is smarter than I am…."♦


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