Pres­i­dent Obama’s mas­tery of the obvi­ous was on dis­play this week dur­ing his lengthy address at West Point.

“Iso­la­tion­ism,” he declared, “is not an option.” There’s a bold state­ment.  But that’s “not to say that every prob­lem has a mil­i­tary solu­tion.”  Has any­one ever said that?  “War rarely con­forms to slo­gans.”  Rarely?  “U.S. mil­i­tary action can­not be the only — or even pri­ma­ry — com­po­nent of our lead­er­ship in every instance.”  Has that ever been sug­gest­ed?  “Amer­i­ca should nev­er ask per­mis­sion to pro­tect our peo­ple, our home­land, or our way of life.” That’s a relief.  “The most direct threat to Amer­i­ca at home and abroad remains ter­ror­ism.”  Real­ly.  But “a strat­e­gy that involves invad­ing every coun­try that har­bors ter­ror­ist net­works is naïve and unsus­tain­able.” That would require an awful lot of inva­sions.  “We must uphold stan­dards that reflect our val­ues.”  Uphold­ing stan­dards that don’t reflect our val­ues would seem wrong.  “We should not expect change to hap­pen overnight.”

Change, nev­er­the­less, is occur­ring – but not the sort of change the Pres­i­dent has been advocating.

• He boast­ed that recent elec­tions had “giv­en a chance for the Ukrain­ian peo­ple to choose their future with­out us fir­ing a shot.” But shots con­tin­ue to be fired.  Just days before he spoke, rebels in east­ern Ukraine seized an air­port in Donet­sk. Gov­ern­ment forces retook the facil­i­ty, launch­ing airstrikes that killed an esti­mat­ed 100 peo­ple, half of them civil­ians.  The rebels retal­i­at­ed by shoot­ing down a mil­i­tary heli­copter, killing 14. The elec­tion the Pres­i­dent tout­ed seems so far to have gen­er­at­ed may­hem and blood­shed, pro­vid­ing the Ukrain­ian peo­ple with lit­tle cer­tain­ty about their future.
• The out­look is no less omi­nous in Syr­ia, where the Pres­i­dent once called for Pres­i­dent Assad’s ouster, then threat­ened to wage war against him before set­tling for a process to rid him of chem­i­cal weapons.  Inter­na­tion­al weapons inspec­tors were attacked ear­li­er this week, pre­sum­ably by gov­ern­ment forces, as they inves­ti­gat­ed Assad’s alleged con­tin­ued use of chlo­rine gas against fel­low Syr­i­ans.   Assad, mean­while, far from being removed from office, is poised to win elec­tion to a third sev­en-year term.
• In Egypt, the Pres­i­dent said that he would “per­sis­tent­ly press for reforms” fol­low­ing a series of coups to which the US inef­fec­tu­al­ly object­ed.  He at first backed then-Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak when the mil­i­tary threat­ened to depose him, then reversed course by sup­port­ing his ouster  The gen­er­als lat­er turned on Mubarak’s elect­ed suc­ces­sor, Mohammed Mor­si, who him­self soon was sacked by the mil­i­tary.  A wave of repres­sion fol­lowed.  Egypt­ian vot­ers legit­imized the oppres­sors in a taint­ed vote just this week.  Reforms, despite the Pres­i­den­t’s urg­ing, evi­dent­ly will have to wait.
• Things are going no bet­ter in Libya, where the President’s bomb­ing cam­paign that removed Muam­mar Gaddafi from office has yield­ed three years of mur­der and tur­moil.  The day before the West Point address, the State Depart­ment urged Amer­i­cans to aban­don the coun­try amid widen­ing violence.

The list of for­eign pol­i­cy set­backs that the Admin­is­tra­tion has suf­fered goes on: the fail­ure of US-ini­ti­at­ed peace talks between Israel and Pales­tine, China’s habit­u­al provo­ca­tions in the South Chi­na Sea, con­tin­ued unrest in Iraq fol­low­ing the President’s deci­sion to remove all US troops before the 2012 election.

And although the Pres­i­dent pro­claimed that “glob­al lead­er­ship requires us to see the world as it is,” he him­self seems inca­pable of doing so.  The speech evinces no aware­ness of Amer­i­ca’s declin­ing influ­ence or the con­se­quences of his many pol­i­cy flops.  He sees an Amer­i­ca that has “rarely been stronger,” the “one indis­pens­able nation” that is shap­ing events and fash­ion­ing a brighter future.  He sur­veys a land­scape of botched ini­tia­tives and sees an unbro­ken vista of suc­cess.  Indeed, for him, it is impos­si­ble to see it any oth­er way.  Those who sug­gest that US influ­ence is dimin­ish­ing in an increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous world are either “mis­read­ing his­to­ry or engaged in par­ti­san pol­i­tics.”  Their ide­o­log­i­cal dis­po­si­tion blinds them to “the world as it is” – a place where the Pres­i­dent fan­cies him­self steer­ing glob­al events in a soft­er and smarter way to advance our interests.

But his most trou­bling delu­sion is that America’s world lead­er­ship is immutable fact.  “Amer­i­ca must always lead on the world stage,” he said. “If we don’t, no one else will.”  If there is one uni­fy­ing theme to the dis­turb­ing chain of recent world events, it is the aspi­ra­tion of many – jihadists, Rus­sia and Chi­na among them – to assume the “lead on the world stage” that the US appears to be relin­quish­ing.  A Pres­i­dent who is obliv­i­ous to this sim­ply is not see­ing things as they are.

Every Pres­i­dent lives in a bub­ble.  By Year 6, his advis­ers have cre­at­ed a durable ver­sion of real­i­ty that is near­ly imper­vi­ous to events.  Suc­cess­es are exag­ger­at­ed, fail­ures denied, min­i­mized or warped to con­form to some man­u­fac­tured nar­ra­tive.  A Pres­i­dent is sur­round­ed by aides who share his views and who are deeply invest­ed in the illu­sion of his suc­cess. Eco­nom­ic advis­ers tell him that the econ­o­my is robust, for­eign pol­i­cy advis­ers that his strategems are win­ning the day, domes­tic pol­i­cy advis­ers that his achieve­ments are his­toric. Con­trary evi­dence is ignored, crit­ics dis­missed as par­ti­san haters. When the Pres­i­dent does ven­ture out­side the White House, it is most often to meet with donors or to speak at cam­paign-like events where every line on his teleprompter evokes affir­ma­tion and praise from a care­ful­ly screened audi­ence.  In those rare moments when real­i­ty man­ages to intrude itself, as in the ongo­ing VA scan­dal, aides reflex­ive­ly absolve the Pres­i­dent of blame for blun­ders made by agency offi­cials whom he appoint­ed and direct­ly supervises.

That Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has proven sus­cep­ti­ble to such flat­ter­ies and fab­ri­ca­tions should come as no sur­prise.  He is, after all, human.  It would take rare vision and courage to see through this con­trived real­i­ty, to rec­og­nize that his for­eign pol­i­cy is fail­ing and that it has to be rethought.  His suc­cess – and ours – nev­er­the­less depends on his at last see­ing the world as it is, not as he has imag­ined it to be.