Obama's foreign policy should be more like Bush's

The man who brought you the "Bushism of the Day", Jacob Weisberg of Slate, argues that many of Obama's failings are the result of trying too hard not to be like past Presidents.

A few paragraphs in, Weisberg argues that Obama's foreign policy failures are the result of trying to be the anti-Bush:

You can see a similar pendulum effect in foreign policy, where the object lesson is not Bill Clinton but George W. Bush. Obama, who did not have much global expertise before coming to office, molded his approach around his predecessor's errors. Bush's naive idealism and unilateralism encouraged Obama's realism and multilateralism. Bush's boycott of North Korea, Cuba, and Iran fed Obama's eagerness to engage pragmatically with those tyrannies. Bush's neglect of the Mideast peace process fed Obama's urge to plunge into it. The new president has reversed the old one's prioritization of Iraq over Afghanistan and, in what has become the political cliche of 2009, tried "hitting the reset button" on relations with Russia.

In so doing, Obama now faces an inverted set of hazards: getting overcommitted in Afghanistan, putting too much faith in the United Nations, accommodating dictators instead of standing up to them. Most alarmingly, given all that his predecessor did to discredit them, Obama has failed to stand up for the broader ideas of democracy promotion and humanitarian intervention. Surely if not for Bush, Obama's instinct after the Iranian election would have been to identify with those risking their lives to free their country, not to get back to his attempt at dialogue with Ahmadinejad"

So, let's get this straight -- Obama is facing "hazards" by being the anti-Bush, but he can't pursue Bush's policies because Bush discredited them? Certainly sounds like he is saying Obama's policies have been different than Bush's, but not any better, but that it's somehow all Bush's fault? Also sounds like he is saying Obama should learn from Bush's policy, but written in a way poorly contrived to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and maintain the storyline of Bush as an idiot.

(Thanks to the WSJ.com opinion page)