Over at Gaw’s place I mentioned my intuition that Obama doesn’t like us very much. I follow current affairs only in an idle sort of way because I don’t really believe in them, so this was based purely on reading the stars and tea leaves and the fact that I couldn’t remember any nice speeches about The Special Relationship etc. However, yesterday I spotted this article in the ST:
When the Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl asked White House officials to name a foreign leader with whom Obama had forged a personal relationship, there was “a lot of hemming and hawing”, he said. To his astonishment, no one mentioned Gordon Brown. Instead the name proffered was Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president.
The British feel particularly miffed. Within days of becoming president, Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. This, followed by Obama’s odd choice of gift to Brown — a box of DVDs including Psycho and Toy Story — prompted speculation of something deeper. In his memoir, Obama writes of how his grandfather was beaten by British troops in colonial Kenya.
A senior official from No 10, who was in Washington in December for Obama’s big speech on Afghanistan, was horrified that the president did not once mention Britain in the 45-minute address despite the presence there of 10,000 British troops.
We’re not alone though, as it appears Obama doesn’t like anyone much except the Russians, Chinese and Indonesians. The root problem, alas, seems to be that he is basically a bit of a jerk.
If one had been almost anywhere in Europe in the midst of all that cheering when Obama was elected and suggested that within a year or so the new President would have significantly worsened diplomatic relations with America’s traditional democratic allies compared to the Bush era, one would have risked a tar-and-feathering. Yet still people don’t listen when I observe the truism that everybody is always wrong about everything.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Obama doesn’t like us very much
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
According to the Sydney Morning Herald Obama likes Australia's PM Rudd best of all, which to many people is not a very positive sign about Obama:
And Obama and Rudd just happen to click. As the Obama administration's top Asia policy official in the State Department, Kurt Campbell, told me in August: "One of the most interesting things to observe is which leaders - philosophically and in terms of temperament and approach to issues - bond initially with American presidents over the years. At the top of the list right now is Prime Minister Rudd.''
Amazing how the freshest things can seem to go rotten quickest. I suppose one doesn't get a Nobel Peace prize by being nice to people with whom one is already friends (though quite what one does get it for is now, I feel, slightly devalued).
I have it on good authority that Obama calls Brown a 'fat-faced joey gaylord'
Well as one who was tarred and feathered for expressing such a view at the time of his election, I cannot but agree with you. Although, I, of course, am right about everything. Except when I'm wrong.
Oh, for the good old days when Blair and Bush were BFFs, eh?
For anyone pretending to understand politics I rebut you thus: Brown's Labour Party is doing well in the polls.
Obama doesn't even seem to want to pretend.
He's hopeless, really crappy, but even then I am still quite amazed by the speed with which his uselessness has revealed itself. There is massive repositioning going on right now among the many who fell for his blather. Indeed the mere fact that a blog like this does not instantly fill up with angry comments (as happened with the Yard's blog whenever somebody criticized the O in response to his metaphysical ruminations on the 2008 election) speaks volumes.
Like Recusant, I tried to point this out before the election, but "He reads the teleprompter so smoothly! He can't be a big jerk". Well, he's been a jerk his entire life, I am just stunned that anyone is surprised by it.
Well, as with Dubya, it's tricky for those of us outside the US to filter some reality through the polar extremes of Republican and Democrat-supporting media (and bloggers).
Though Bill Clinton looks better and better with every passing year, it has to be said.
Absent really stupid stuff (Cap 'n Trade, and that health care monstrosity), is Obama doing anything particularly different from GW B---?
(In deference to GAW, I didn't spell out his name.)
Does Gaw have an embargo on both GBs, or just our G____ B_______?
Post a Comment