Before he lost his mind Rudy Giuliani hit on something insightful about President Obama. "It’s a terrible thing to say, but I don't think President Obama loves America." Obama was cerebral, cool, even somewhat detached. In The Promised Land he bemoans, and repeatedly, his inability to communicate viscerally and understandably to the American people—as FDR and Bill Clinton did. Of all possible shortcomings for a person who can destroy the world to have, that is not the most concerning. And, our vices are our virtues, Obama’s detachment gave him a rare ability to read people and situations without the coloring, distorting influence of emotion. I read  the below in A Promised Land days ago. I have read FDR, Churchill, JFK, Stalin, Mao, LBJ, Jefferson, Adams, Jackson, Lincoln, Bismarck, Hitler, from a glance at the bookshelf in front of me, and I have never read as perceptive a take on a situation as this from a world leader. In September, 2010 Obama had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah of Jordan to the White House to try to work out something a teeny bit better in the Middle East.

...Later that night, when the dinner was over and the leaders had gone back to their hotels and I sat in the Treaty Room...I couldn’t help feeling a vague sense of disquiet. The  speeches, the small talk, the easy familiarity--it all felt too comfortable, almost ritualized, a performance...designed to placate the latest U.S. president who thought things could change. I imagined them shaking hands afterward, like actors taking off their costumes and makeup backstage, before returning to the world they knew...violence, coercion, fear, and the nursing of hatred because, deep down, none of the leaders I’d met with believed anything else was possible.

A world without illusions--that's what they'd call it.

...

In the months to come I’d think back often to my dinner with Abbas and Netanyahu, Mubarak, and King Abdullah, the pantomime of it, their lack of resolve.(bold in original; underlined added)

After his first meeting Barack Obama nailed the diagnosis of the Middle East: a lack of will. Brilliant, remarkable man, Barack Obama.