FP‘s Laura Rozen had a must-read over the weekend that takes another look at Obama’s meeting with the Saudi King. According to Rozen, a very plugged-in lefty, says “the meeting did not go well,” and she quotes one source saying that “It was the first time that President Obama as a senator, candidate, or president was not able to get almost anything or any movement using his personal power of persuasion.” Obama asked the Saudis to make concessions to match the concessions he had demanded from the Israelis. But the Saudi King balked — and “launched a tirade” that his underlings later apologized for. The New York Times has also reported that Obama was “frustrated” by his trip to Saudi Arabia and that he “failed to extract any meaningful gestures toward Israel to revive the peace process.” All of which offers some context for a very odd quote from the president’s meeting with the leaders of Jewish groups last week. According to a source, the president was asked by one of the attendees, what the administration might do to publicly pressure the Saudis in order to push back against a growing perception that only Israel is subjected to public pressure. According to this source, President Obama responded that “the Saudis are absolutely terrified of their street.” Further, he said this fear “just underscores the need for us to build credibility with the street — to create new political space in the Middle East.” So Obama gets nowhere with the Saudis and squeezes the Israelis instead, hoping that in doing so he will, at some point, earn enough cred with the Arab street to allow Arab governments the “political space” to make real concessions to the peace process. But in the event, the Israelis are also thumbing their nose at the White House, publicly rejecting White House demands for a freeze on new construction in East Jerusalem. The White House has put both the Israelis and the Palestinians in an impossible position — and even George Mitchell is “reported to want to leave his negotiator position at the end of 2009.” It turns out that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not Northern Ireland. Over the weekend Politico‘s Ben Smith ran a story on Obama with the lede, “Finally, we’re starting to see him sweat.” The piece, which seems to capture the current mood in town, prompted this response from White House flack Dan Pfeiffer:
The campaign-style trash talk from the White House seems inappropriate, but this is the general disposition of the Obama White House — ‘if he could go from state senator to president in four years, there’s nothing he can’t do.’ But maybe beating Hillary Clinton isn’t quite as tough as health care reform, or solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Nobody ever got rich betting against violence in the Middle East either. And President Obama’s “personal power of persuasion” doesn’t seem to be enough right now to change the odds all that much.
