Why it’s so difficult for President Obama to get any credit for anything

In the past, this country has operated as if our way was the only way and because of actions like that our relationship with the rest of the world has suffered.  America spent a lot of time on the world stage as the big bully and when the public voted for change, we wanted change in the way we treated others.  We voted for this president because he seemed not to saber-rattle or shoot first and question later.  We voted for this guy because he seemed to think first and look at short term and long term results before choosing a course of action.  That was what we voted for and that is what we got.  Now it appears that some of us would rather go into something half blind instead of fully informed. 

I say this because of the question posed by Romesh Ratnesar in his article titled Libya Intervention a Watershed for Obama's Foreign Policy when he asked “Does Barack Obama know what he's doing?”  He justifies his question with the following evidence. “He supported pro-democracy forces in Egypt and nudged out a regime the U.S. had backed for decades, but has been unwilling to do the same in Bahrain or Yemen. In Libya, his Administration was against armed intervention to stop Muammar Gaddafi before Obama was for it. American warplanes carried out the initial wave of strikes on Tripoli, but Obama's aides insist that Washington is merely following the Europeans' lead. U.S. officials were reticent for days as the nuclear crisis in Japan worsened, then declared the situation to be even direr than the Japanese government had let on.  As the crises accumulate, Obama has remained the picture of detached serenity, which only agitates his critics more.”  “Kori Schake, a centrist former Bush Administration official, charges that Obama "just isn't willing to bear much freight for other peoples' freedom." The Economist's Lexington column asks, "Has he, at any point in his presidency so far, demonstrated real political courage?" and is unable to find an example. David J. Rothkopf, a national-security expert who worked in the Clinton Administration, says Obama's leadership style resembles nothing so much as "the planet's master of ceremonies - nudging, exhorting and charming, but less comfortable flexing U.S. muscles than many of his predecessors." 

The article then turns to what made this president so welcomed by the majority of Americans evidently “Obama's approach to foreign policy has emphasized the limits of American power more than its reach. He has wound down the American engagement in Iraq and stated a desire, if not a concrete plan, to withdraw substantial numbers of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. His Administration has tried to soothe relations with potential rivals like China and Russia rather than confront them. It has resisted calls for military action against Iran.”  “"He is by nature a prudent, cautious, measured person," says David M. Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian who has met with Obama. "He's not an enthusiast. He wants to be deliberate and careful, and the way in which he looks at the world reflects that."  “It also suits the mood of the public, which has little appetite for more foreign adventures.”  Why the extreme lack of credit, because ratings are built on controversy not common ground and because it’s more exciting to get the scoop than it is to get the truth.