It has seemed strange to me how this tone has developed/been revealed in the Obama Administration. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but Rich Lowry did it for me here:
"The calendar says Pres. Barack Obama took office in 2009, although that’s only a technicality. In his own mind, Obama ascended in Year Zero, a time of ritualistic cleansing in preparation for the relaunching of an America free from its past sins.
Has an American president ever appeared less vested in his nation’s history than Barack Obama?...
It’s as if we elected not so much a president as a University of Chicago law professor who — holding his country at a critical distance — analyzes its strengths and weaknesses in a boffo traveling lecture series. In Obama’s serial apologies — for America’s arrogance, for its mistreatment of the Indians, for Hiroshima, and so on — can be detected muted versions of the multiculturalist orthodoxies of academe and of the themes of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
...
Obama hopes that throwing America’s past under the bus will win him diplomatic chits abroad, as we “break free” from “stale debates and old ideologies.” What he doesn’t realize is that for enemies like Iran and Venezuela, the debates aren’t stale and the ideologies aren’t old. For these players, Obama’s rhetorical concessions are not ways to move beyond the debates but to make advances within them.
Obama seems to take active pleasure in saying that there are no senior or junior partners on the international stage. The danger is that foreign governments will actually believe him. Obama may think he’s being magnanimous and admirably humble about his own country, but adversaries could be forgiven for detecting weakness.