Obama in Cairo: The Expectations Game

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Katie Connolly

Over the last few days, Administration officials have been carefully tamping down expectations of Obama's speech in Cairo this afternoon. They stressed that the speech alone won't be the catalyst for a change in relations between the U.S. and Muslim world, but rather it's part of an ongoing dialogue. There's been a lot of chatter in recent days about what to expect from the speech, what it might mean for both Americans and Middle East citizens.

As reporters, we hope the speech will be a punctuation mark, a moment where the narrative shifts. We hope that because it's a moment we can capture, an event we can point to, describe and explain. We want it to be Nixon goes to China, where a shift in the national psyche is perfectly encapsulated in a meeting, readily documented for posterity. But in reality international diplomacy moves slowly, and relations between America and an amorphous, diverse Muslim world are complex and shifting. Muslim nations and their dealings with America are hardly uniform - the relationships with Indonesia, Egypt and Iran for example are divergent, characterized by differences in leadership, direction and strategic value, as well as historical idiosyncrasies.

Cable news can hype expectations for the speech all it likes, but is anyone really expecting a speech alone to profoundly alter these complicated sets of relations? We've been warned there won't be any major policy announcements or dramatic promises. Instead, much like his speech on race during last year's election, expect Obama to tackle thorny nuanced issues with his trademark erudition. Look for him to be both professor - with didactic explanations of the historical contours of the relationship - and inspirer - making elegant references to Muslim intellectual and cultural contributions to both American and the world at large. These will likely serve as springboards for hopeful musings about the common greatness of humanity and our ability to overcome challenges. Like the race speech, this will be part of slow process of tinkering with cultural perceptions and norms, in the expectation that the conversation will evolve over time.

Perhaps the only circumstance that would signal a dramatic shift in relations is the downside scenario, that is, if Obama screws up. A poorly executed reference, a cultural inaccuracy, a lack of recognition of U.S. responsibility for its more contentious actions, all these things could be a serious setback to his young Presidency. After all, Obama is still a new face on the international scene, relatively unknown to Muslim leaders across the globe. His personal narrative and history with Islam may provide with this a unique entrée, but his lack of established personal connections with Muslim leaders means that he'll have to proceed carefully in this already cautious courtship. He'll also need to veer away from the rhetoric of his predecessor. Promises of liberty and freedom ring hollow in this region, for both cultural and political reasons. Obama will need to demonstrate a more supple understanding of Muslim world's interest in recognition and justice.

That's surely a lot of pressure for the President, knowing that the potential downsides will outweigh the positives. If he slips up, who knows how long he'll have to deal with the consequences. But even if all goes perfectly and the speech is embraced in the Muslim world, he still won't have anything tangible to take home. Lucky for him, the odds of it going well are in his favor. And it wouldn't be the first time his words have, slowly but deliberately, changed history's course.

Tag(s): Barack Obama, Obama in Egypt

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