Obama Glow Dims

SEOUL, South Korea (By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT) November 12, 2010 — Foreign leaders could not seem to get enough of President Obama when he arrived on the world stage two years ago. They brought copies of his memoir to global conferences seeking his autograph. They angled for handshakes and “bilats” — or bilaterals, diplomatic jargon for one-on-one meetings. They maneuvered to get next to him in photo opportunities.

Now the glow has worn off.

So when the Group of 20 conference wrapped up here on Friday — amid disputes over currency and global trade imbalances between the United States and its allies — the heads of state who had gathered here did not seem shy about putting Mr. Obama on the defensive.

“It’s not just a function of personal charm,” Mr. Obama said Friday, at a news conference wrapping up the session. “It’s a function of countries’ interests and seeing if we can work through to align them.”

Questions about the United States’ power abroad and Mr. Obama’s diplomatic touch were threads running through the news conference. When a reporter asked what kind of complaints he was hearing from fellow leaders about the United States, Mr. Obama laughed it off, asking, “What about compliments?” He said that other world leaders were pushing back against the United States because “we’re initiating ideas.”

As to whether the midterm elections at home had weakened him overseas, he served up a one-word answer: No.

Before leaving Washington for a 10-day diplomatic tour of Asia he has characterized as an economic mission, Mr. Obama conceded his relationship with the American people had come down from an “incredible high” and gotten “rockier and tougher” as time went on. But he said the same is not true of his relations with foreign leaders.

“When I first came into office, people might have been interested in more photo ops because there had been a lot of hoopla surrounding my election,” Mr. Obama said, adding he now has a “genuine friendship” with a raft of world leaders — though “that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be differences.”

He ticked off those on the “genuine friendship” list: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; Prime Minister Tayip Erdogan of Turkey; and President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea. Then, perhaps to avoid offending the leader of a rival country, Mr. Obama threw out another name: President Hu Jintao of China, whose clashes with the president over currency policy have drawn headlines here.

“It wasn’t any easier to talk about currency when I had just been elected and my poll numbers were at 65 percent than it is now,” Mr. Obama said. “It was hard then, and it is now.”

Mr. Obama is nearing the end of his trip, which has produced mixed results. In India, he won praise for reframing that country’s relationship with the United States by lifting restrictions on exports of sensitive technologies and by backing India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

His stop in Indonesia was a sentimental homecoming; Mr. Obama lived there as a boy.

But Mr. Obama seemed to stumble in Seoul. He failed to seal a deal with Mr. Lee on a long-awaited free-trade agreement, a serious setback for a president who has made doubling exports a centerpiece of his economic agenda. And his plan to even out global trade imbalances ran into resistance from Mr. Hu and Mrs. Merkel, among others. Mr. Obama chalked it up to international muscle-flexing.

“The United States, obviously, has a special role to play on the international stage, regardless of who is president,” Mr. Obama said. “We are a very large, very wealthy, very powerful country. We have had outsized influence over world affairs for a century now. And you are now seeing a situation in which a whole host of other countries are doing very well and coming into their own, and naturally they are going to be more assertive in terms of their interests and ideas. And that’s a healthy thing.”

Mr. Obama lamented the “search for drama” in disagreement at such summits.

“Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” he said, “And some countries pushed back.”

By the time 45 minutes had passed, Mr. Obama seemed eager to end the news conference and get on to his next stop: Yokohama, Japan, where he is scheduled to attend yet another conference, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Air Force One was waiting.

“I’m late for my flight,” the president explained.