“Obama meets with Putin/Medvedev, they then hold beaming joint press conference –like Yeltsin & Clinton’s laugh-a-thon — announcing ”new relationship” –and Red Army immediately pulls all the way back over its own border.”

Too “deus ex machina” (or should I say “Obamessiah ex machina”) for the average voter. You need some indication that things are going in a certain direction (like the 6 years before Clinton’s candidacy.)

Instead we’ve had the opposite. Years of polonium poisonings, murdered journalists, botched hostage rescues, etc. It would be a really bad movie, and the average American knows one when she sees it.