Saying no to a rock star

Shmuel Rosner in Slate has an interesting take on the value of saying no to the rock star president: 

It isn't just that no one has cut Obama any slack. World leaders seem to be taking pleasure in rebuffing him, disappointing him, even, in some cases, mocking him. French President Nicolas Sarkozy famously called Obama an "inexperienced, ill-prepared" leader.

Praising and admiring Obama are still common, but raising doubts about him, even scoffing at him, is now becoming fashionable. Although he is still popular among Europeans and more popular with Muslims than his despised predecessor, Obama is being tagged with the unflattering label John Quincy Adams earned before he lost the 1828 election: "Adams can write, Jackson can fight."

Obama can write—and he can speak—but if he can't fight, he'll find it hard to achieve his goals. If he can't fight, he isn't scary. And evidently, being popular didn't help him much. In fact, you might even say that being popular made it more difficult for Obama to succeed. He was too popular for his own good, annoyingly popular, distractingly popular. When a TV interviewer asked Sarkozy whether there was "competition for leadership" between him and Obama, the Frenchman responded, "there's no competition," but he was demonstrably annoyed.

Obama's popularity with the people of the world is something local leaders feel an instinctive urge to resist. No one is pleased when a foreign politician is more loved and respected than he is. And in many cases, opposition is the trouble. For Netanyahu and Abbas, resisting Obama was politically beneficial. Their "people" appreciated the leaders' newly discovered chutzpah. Unhinged by Obama's conciliatory tone, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez suggested that the president is the devil without worrying much about possible consequences. Iranians have more confidence in Obama than they had in Bush—only more reason for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to point out that he can't tell the difference.

In fact, no world leader has paid a price for disappointing Obama. With Obama so nice and so conciliatory, risking retaliation by the White House doesn't seem all that dangerous. If resisting Bush's policies was a political necessity, encouraged and driven by the anger of the masses (ask Britain's Tony Blair about that), resisting Obama has become trendy, almost cool, because it gives world leaders the chance to stand taller, to be an equal member of the club of the clashing rock stars. Imagine the most popular boy in class asking a girl out. Imagine that after much consideration the girl says no. Not even you are good enough for me.