So much for the “change” part of “hope and change“:
The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.
Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis — and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price — and that price might be America’s position as a global power.
In his fight against terrorism, Bush had the ideologue Dick Cheney at his side. “We must take the battle to the enemy,” he said — and sent out the bomber squadrons toward Iraq on the basis of mere suspicion. The result of the offensive is well known.
Obama’s Cheney
Obama’s Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama’s senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers’ self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.
That’s harsh, to say the least. Stripped of its bizarre anti-Bush views, what we have here is the default position for European elites: utter contempt for whomever happens to be President of the United States.
You can’t change this – its built-in; anti-Americanism is so ingrained in the world that nothing short of the end of America would stop it. Used to be, of course, that the default position was to be anti-British…back a century ago when Britain was the world’s most powerful nation. Britain dropped out and while there might be the odd stab at Britain from time to time, most of the fire of the world is reserved for the United States…and this is simply because we are the most powerful nation in the world, because whatever happens in other countries is trivial compared to what happens in ours and, most importantly, because self-absorbed and self-important intellectuals just can’t stand the fact that those yokels in the USA have that much power.
Obama still has the aura of a rock star and thus can still draw large, worshipful crowds…but that is a vanishing commodity. No matter what Obama does over the remainder of his term, he’ll find the world growing ever stronger in expressions of hatred and contempt for us…which things are entirely unimportant because righteous indignation doesn’t do anything to anyone. If Obama has an sense at all, he’ll swiftly stop trying to kowtow to foreign opinion and just get on with it…but I doubt that Obama has the simple guts to put up for long with opposition…he’ll continue to try to curry favor, which will result in more contempt, which will result in more favor currying….it could get rather nauseating over the next couple years.
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