It's not surprising when your enemies have nothing good to say about you, but when your friends speak of your failings with sadness in their eyes, you should probably take stock and maybe consider some time in rehab.

Walter Russell Mead is such a friend. Not only is a he a serious man, one of the country's leading experts on foreign policy, but he's a Democrat and voted for Obama. His critique, soft in tone, but devastating in it's faint praise, seem to capture the essential flaw in this administration's political style.

President Obama is now passing through what one must hope for both his sake and ours are the worst moments of a presidency no longer young. Abroad, the intervention in Libya has not had the quick and clear results he had hoped. While things may still go well, and one devoutly hopes that they do, US prestige is deeply engaged in a confused civil war in which all NATO’s firepower has been unable to turn the tide. As British and French advisers on the ground struggle to mold the rebels into an effective force and the allies thrash around to develop a politically responsible and accountable rebel leadership, the military’s lack of confidence in the civilian strategy is palpable.

At home, the President has been wounded both by his successes and his failures. Colin Powell referred to the US victory against Saddam Hussein as a “catastrophic success”; President Obama now has a couple of those of his own. The economic stimulus package aroused a fear on the hustings and, increasingly, in the bond markets about the looming fiscal catastrophe. The health care bill, an achievement the President expected and believed would cement both his place in history and a new era of liberal Democratic hegemony in American politics, continues to weaken the administration; the patient is not (yet) accepting the transplant.

The situation in Libya was not hard to predict. I know, I predicted it, and I've never been to Libya, but I do know from recent history and historical experience that insurgencies are not one-and-done. I thought intervention in Libya was necessary, and I predicted that it would require special forces to train a militarily-inexperienced rabble to mount an effective, and long-term resistance to Khadafy's mercenary force. Obama's public salesmanship of U.S. intervention was rather typical of his style--long on promise, short on realism. Syria? That's another post entirely.

The President's reflex to ignore the complexities and scale of effort is understandable when you consider that he hasn't actually done anything in his life that prepared him for the role of estimator-in-chief. This is quite remarkable when you consider that most people in rather common jobs, learn how to come in on-time and under-budget. An automobile mechanic who kept you car an extra two weeks and charged several times the initial quote, would not stay in business long. The implication is clear--we elected a man less qualified to run the country than a successful garage owner.

Mead amplifies and extends this judgment.

We are starting to get to know this President a little better, and his chief besetting fault is increasingly clear: the President falls between stools. He is a man of half measures, a man who spends so much money hedging his bets that he loses even when he wins.

Time and again the President angers one side without conciliating the other. His public demand that Israel agree to a complete settlement freeze as a condition for peace talks alienated Israelis (and not just supporters of Prime Minister Netanyahu); his subsequent back peddling humiliated and angered the Palestinians. He pleased no one, fumbled what he had once proclaimed a crucial priority of his administration, and is left with reduced influence with both sides.

Recently, in a New Yorker Magazine article about Paul Krugman, the latter characterized Democrats being all about policy, while Obama was all about politics. A rather typical misapprehension for Krugman on both sides of that assertion, but Mead keenly observed the true character of the President.

By instinct, President Obama is not a politician. >The President, like many other bright Ivy-educated lawyers, views the world through a legalistic prism, one that underestimates both the power and legitimacy of political considerations in the administration of government. Closing Guantanamo and trying KSM in Lower Manhattan seem both obviously necessary and unambiguously good to the legalistic mind. The ward-heeling politician knows better. This lack of instinctive appreciation for the crooked pathways of the political mindset (a characteristic President Obama shares with Woodrow Wilson) further undercuts the President’s ability to play the political system like a true virtuoso.

Usually, national catastrophes take the form of invasion or defeat in war. Barack Obama's election appears to be one of those rare historical instances where national catastrophe took the form of putting the wrong man into power at a critical juncture. Adolph Hitler and Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte of France were both leaders whose personal failings had long-lasting effects on their respective nations, but more sobering is the reality that something dysfunctional in the national character put those men where they were. We can survive Obama, but can we in fact survive who we've become as a nation that elects such a clearly deficient leader?