BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

“I’ve come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutal interest and mutal respect and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”  — President Barak Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009

In the last two weeks, three years after that speech, militant Islamists have been engaging in violent, lethal protests against the United States in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, Tunisia, Indonesia, and Guinea. In Afghanistan, the U.S. is also facing violence from within, from Afghan police we have trained and work alongside.

Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, distanced her boss from the protests in a whirlwind weekend tour of Sunday talk shows.

“This has been a spontaneous reaction to a video,” she kept repeating over and over again as she made her way from one television studio to the next.

The Rice explanation of an incredibly complex chain of events in the Middle East was clearly intended to absolve the Obama Administration of any responsibility in the anti-American protests.

It is a bit difficult to understand why the Administration pushed Rice into the media glare. Her performance was weak and unconvincing. And strangely enough, she showed up after the State Department told reporters very emphatically that it was not answering any questions, preferring instead to slip through the universal transparency escape hatch, the old “ongoing FBI investigation.”

When she did get on the air, Ambassador Rice contradicted her own Administration on two counts, one that the former Navy Seals killed in Libya were part of a State Department security contingent there to protect the Ambassador, which they weren’t, and that there was some advance indication that there may be trouble at the Egyptian embassy.

Experts who appeared on TV or were interviewed in the press on the outbreak of violence almost unanimously disputed Rice’s assertion the protests were spontaneous and sparked by a trailer to a film that, to this day, no one is sure really exists.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer:  “Is this more than just a film?”

“Oh, Absolutely,” responded Council on Foreign Relations director Richard Haas. “The film is the wrong place to focus.”

Senator John McCain:  “People don’t bring rocket propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration.”

“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” responded Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif.

“According to U.S. intel, the attack on the Benghazi consulate was pre-planned and the protest over the movie outside the building was used as a diversion for security. Yet the White House claims that these protests are directed at an offensive film, not at the United States,” said a statement from House Republican Policy Chairman Tom Price of Georgia.

The only reinforcement of the White House message came from the media, of course.

“Yes”, CNN anchor Candy Crowley exclaimed, jumping in during an interview with Rice. “This video sparked it.” NBC also came to the President’s defense. Brian Williams hasn’t done a story on the protests without reminding us that they were all sparked by the video.

Few of us, with the apparent exception of Ambassador Rice, are informed enough, experienced enough, intelligent enough, or knowledgeable enough to sort through the rubble of last week’s events and fully comprehend why it happened, who was behind it, or the extent to which the United States was culpable, either because of a bad foreign policy or the lack of one. It will take time and we may never be able to understand it.

We are witness to a historic transformation in Middle East politics, religion and culture. We are witness to, and the victims of, a tectonic struggle between radical and more radical factions within the Muslim world, between East and West, between Israel and her enemies, between and among powerful religious movements, and between the United States and a number of infant, unsteady, struggling governments that our own President isn’t sure are allies. I recall one expert saying the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t sure whether it’s a government, a political party, or a revolutionary movement.

It’s hard to blame President Obama for not having command of events in the Middle East or being able to project a clear American foreign policy that contributes to a solution. Middle East solutions are as illusive as Harry Houdini. It is above and beyond him as it was for Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush.

One of the differences between Obama and them, however, is his response to it all. He’s tried to duck and dodge his way out of any connectivity to the region and its turmoil. When he took office, he created expectations he could never have met, and that’s par for the course, but now when the situation demands mature, honest, and humble leadership, he hides behind flimsy, inane excuses, sends the UN Ambassador to run interference for him, and goes into campaign mode deflecting criticism by turning the heat on Mitt Romney for making the wrong statement in the wrong place at the wrong time, which he did. Once again the President has chosen to obfuscate rather than inform, even when one element, the lack of security at the embassies, was so painfully obvious.

It is the boilerplate response of the Obama Administration, placing blame on others and offering lame excuses rather than reasonable explanations whenever the whiff of controversy reaches the public nostril.

The coming days and weeks will no doubt produce more information, both reliable and junk, despite the Administration’s blackout. Congress should conduct vigorous investigations so that we all can get as close to the truth as possible, so that we all are better educated.

More urgent, however, is the need for a President who is more engaged. He has been campaigning for 11 straight months. This week he was scheduled to campaign in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, entertain the Minnesota Lynx basketball team, and travel to New York to shmooze with Jay-Z and Beyonce and appear on the David Letterman show. Thursday he is due in Miami and Tampa and then back to a campaign stop in Virginia.

He should take some time off from the campaign trail and govern. It would probably boost his poll numbers and tell us more about him than his campaign ads.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.