Posted by StephC on February 5th, 2010 in Obama, Opinion, World Affairs
The European Union is no longer charmed, it seems.
“We want to see a strong and united Europe, speaking with one voice. In the best of all possible worlds, that one voice will be saying what we want to hear,” Mr. Gordon said, according to the Web site of Britain’s Economist magazine. “If it is not saying what we want to hear, then we would rather that voice was less united. For the foreseeable future, we will have to have relations with the EU and with nations. You go to the place that can deliver.”
Those unusual public comments were followed by even more candid remarks that stunned many in the audience: “We want to see Europe thinking more strategically, because we think if they do think more strategically, they will think more like Americans.”
Perhaps, not so much support:
In an earlier conversation with reporters, Sarkozy compared his electoral record to Obama, says the piece, whose byline is of the Parisian correspondent for a Swiss newspaper, Le Temps, owned by Le Monde.
“Obama has been in power for a year, and he has already lost three special elections. Me, I have won two legislative elections and the EU election. What can one say I’ve lost?” Sarkozy is quoted as asking. [snip]
The piece also quotes a Sarkozy advisor, Alain Minc, expressing what it claims is Sarkozy’s true view of Obama in Le Parisien: “He’s a charmer, a conciliator, but I am not sure that he’s a strong leader in a crisis writing.”
Perhaps that is why both Sarkozy and Merkel blew off the E.U. snub.
This attitude could explain why Obama’s personal approval numbers remain relatively high in spite of the downward track of his job approval numbers.
It seems the people are saying they support Obama but not his “mission’, much like a few years ago, some American counterparts were saying they support the troops but not the mission.
To my ears (actually eyes plus semantics) it’s the politically correct way of saying they’re having buyers’ remorse. These countries can’t say outright what they really think without further damaging international relations but they can say, “support the president but not his mission.”
Or, as Lech Walesa put it:
The United States is only one superpower. Today they lead the world. Nobody has doubts about it. Militarily. They also lead economically but they’re getting weak. But they don’t lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope.
Obama worship is over, at home and abroad. The world demanded a rock star’s charisma coupled with leadership. They got the rock star. The media love affair still continues as The Politico exhorts us to not count Obama out, just yet. Such an article reminds me of the time when the media was telling us not to count out McCain yet just a couple of weeks before the 2008 elections.
With the swearing in of Scott Brown as the 41st Republican Senator effectively killing the Democrats’ filibuster proof majority, matters look grim for the president and his agenda promoting Congress. Of course the Democrats had to get one last shot in before Brown officially became a Senator for Massachusetts.
If there was any clue that the Democrats wanted one last opportunity to pump their last hours of super majority muscle, it happened on Thursday, immediately before Sen.-elect Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, was finally sworn in by Vice President Joe Biden at 5 p,m. While the GOP grew antsier over when Mr. Brown would be seated in the Senate, Democrats managed to squeeze in one last vote for labor nominee Patricia Smith just hours before Mr. Brown became an official U.S. senator. Senate Democrats confirmed Ms. Smith to the Solicitor of Labor on a party-line vote 60 to 37.
That move may go down in history as an unsuccessful [a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass”.Hail Mary pass by the Democratic Congress. Their petty tyrannical political power plays will have ramifications for their future political health.
Crossposted to
The Minority Report.