"It’s just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy.”

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Wall Street Journal describing US foreign policy today.

"America is shooting itself in the foot," he says. "Saudi Arabia and me, myself, we love the United States. But what’s happening right now here, from Republicans and Democrats, is just not helping the image of the United States and is making this perception that America is going down a reality."

When a guy like me, agrees with a guy like him, ..well .. it’s with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool.

Right here in River City.

As for President Obama, his second term is “going downhill completely,” he says, adding on several occasions the disclaimer that “this is the impression I have in Saudi Arabia.” But it’s clear that the Saudis believe that the president’s political troubles shape his actions in their region.

Mr. Obama’s recent Hamlet act on Syria surprised and infuriated Riyadh. After the worst chemical-weapons atrocity of the war, the American leader heeded long-standing calls for military intervention, then hedged by asking for congressional approval, then nixed airstrikes in favor of a disarmament pact with Syria’s Bashar Assad. The civil war continued—with Assad and his Iranian allies lately taking the upper hand. Mr. Alwaleed says of Mr. Obama: “He blinked.”

Then came the autumn outreach to Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, leading to this week’s negotiations in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program. Another “impression” from the prince: President Obama’s falling popularity explains his “overeagerness” for an agreement made “very fast to at least put one issue in foreign policy aside” because “he’s wounded now across the board.” The Saudis view the Shiite theocracy in Tehran as the biggest threat to the Sunni Arab world.

Though the American public soured on Saudi Arabia after the 9/11 terror attacks were organized by a Saudi, Washington and Riyadh remained on good terms. But now relations are strained, perhaps the worst breach since the 1980s fight over the proposed sale of U.S. Awacs planes to the kingdom. A frequent Saudi complaint these days is that this White House doesn’t listen to them or reveal its true intentions.

"Frankly speaking," Mr. Alwaleed says, during the first Obama term "his communication was almost nil," aside from a brief visit with King Abdullah in Riyadh in 2009. Ronald Reagan and every president since cultivated personal ties, but "Obama is very cold because he is very, very immersed" in domestic policy.