Obama's UN Show: Does Anyone Care?

President Obama headed back to Washington after a whirlwind week in New York at the U.N., and the report card on what he accomplished is mixed.

With down economic times weighing heavily on the president and on midterm elections, Americans paid little attention to what the president had to say. So, who cares about foreign policy?

Out of the block from his vacation on Martha's Vineyard in August, Mr. Obama announced his foreign policy agenda, the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq and the restart of peace talks on the Middle East. The president's interest in staking his claim to world leadership and a new era was at center stage during his three days and two nights in New York.

Unlike previous U.S. presidents, Mr. Obama gave three addresses at the U.N., laying out his international priorities: peace in the Middle East took center stage; he offered negotiations to an offensive and defiant Iranian president; he laid out the plan for nuclear non-proliferation; the president heralded a dramatic new foreign aid approach; and he took an active role in an independence referendum in the Sudan.

Appearing defensive, Obama sent a message to the American public and the international community in his U.N. General Assembly address that he did have foreign policy successes to show for his 20 months in office. He listed the foreign policies one by one, contrasting them to a period of American isolation, in a clear reference to his predecessor. He said he is reforming our system of global finance, beginning with Wall Street reform at home, and that America is waging a more effective fight against al Qaeda, while winding down the war in Iraq and that the U.S. and Russia signed the most comprehensive arms control agreement in decades.

But, with American focus off the Iraq war and a beleaguered American public that is skeptical about what is being accomplished in Afghanistan, the success list rang hollow. Few American network media organizations even covered the address in depth in their nightly broadcasts. Problems abound: the U.S.-Russia Treaty has not passed the Senate, economic growth has not been felt by Americans, U.S. relations with the Muslim world are in worse straights, and there were no announcements on the Middle East peace negotiations.

Even before the big address to the General Assembly, there was the president's address to the anti-poverty summit, with the roll-out of a new approach to foreign aid, one that will focus on accountability and security. This is not charity, he said, it is in America's interest. But where is the money going to come from?

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Needless to say, the attention-grabber at the U.N. was the offensive Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose litany of anti-Israel and anti-U.S. comments culminated in his advocacy of the conspiracy theories that the U.S. spearheaded the September 11 attacks and ended with the good news story that he met with released American hiker Sarah Shourd.

Other speakers at the U.N. took their cue from the pain felt by the American public from the high unemployment, record levels of poverty in the U.S. and the devastation around the world from a global recession.

Kathy Calvin, the CEO of the U.N. Foundation told CBS News that one of the focuses of the Foundation, which has benefitted from contributions from Ted Turner and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to couple American children living in poverty with children overseas so that they can help each other.

It was a surprise, with troubles with the U.S. economy and the news about poverty in the U.S., that the President unveiled a new U.S. foreign aid program. In the end, President Obama did not grab the American public's attention or the world's support with his U.N. visit. Despite his announcement of his upcoming international travel, the focus on U.S. domestic politics does not appear to be dwindling.