Smart power.

Throughout the summer and autumn, as talks on a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq foundered, President Barack Obama and his point man on Iraq, Vice President Joe Biden, remained aloof from the process, not even phoning top Iraqi officials to help reach a deal, according to logs released by the U.S. Embassy here.

The omission is an unusual one, given the high priority that U.S. officials had given to achieving an agreement for some sort of residual U.S. presence in Iraq after the Dec. 31 pullout deadline set in a 2008 pact between the two countries. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other senior Pentagon officials spoke often about the need for an agreement in a pivotal country in a volatile region and insisted talks were continuing up until Friday, when Obama announced that all U.S. troops would be coming home before the end of December…

A major complication was the insistence by the Obama administration that the accord go before the Iraqi parliament, something that in the end Iraqi politicians decided was impossible. But whether that restriction was necessary is an open question. Many status-of-forces agreements are signed at the executive level only, particularly in countries without elected legislatures.

But the White House turned the issue over to the State Department’s legal affairs office, reporters in Baghdad were told on Saturday. The lawyers gave a variety of options, but Obama chose the most stringent, approval by Iraq’s legislature of a new agreement, citing as precedent that the Iraqi parliament had approved the 2008 agreement, reporters were told.

In other words, he could have avoided parliament and negotiated directly with Iraq’s executive leadership — a move which likely would have saved negotiations and produced an agreement. But instead they stayed on the sidelines as negotiations fell apart and demanded that any agreement that could be reached be put through a process guaranteed to kill it.

Why did they allow negotiations to fall apart and the United States to look the fool? Politics. Voters wanted a withdrawal from Iraq and allowing negotiations to fail, while a blow to security, meant Obama could announce an end to the war in an effort to bring up those approval numbers. Everything with this administration is about politics. Everything.

As Allahpundit says, if you want to withdraw then withdraw. But don’t dangle Iraqi and high-ranking American officials — including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — along for months, providing them false hope of reconciliation when you really have no plan to stay. It wastes everyone’s time, makes the United States look weak, and takes up resources that Iraq could devote to securing the situation after withdrawal.

My theory: Obama wanted to withdraw quickly but didn’t want blame for any negative consequences. So if we withdraw and the situation is fine, well, he brags about withdrawing troops. If the situation deteriorates and the country’s disaster is on the nightly news, he can say he tried to stay but those darn Iraqis wouldn’t have any of it.