Sunday, November 09, 2008

Prior Inconsistent Statement of Election Week

British columnist Gerard Baker knows America, and Americans, better than any other European writer. (Sullivan and Hitchens have been here too long to count as British--and Hitch is a citizen.) On Tuesday, I quoted Baker reminding British readers "what a conservative country [America] is."

By Wednesday, however, Baker's London Times column showed him suffering a severe case of Obama mania:
The American people yesterday demonstrated once again their unique capacity for self-renewal by electing the first black man as head of state, not much more than a generation after the country’s African-Americans were accorded full civil rights.

And a mere four years after apparently confirming in place a semi-permanent conservative ascendancy, US voters swept into office a Democratic party that is comfortably to the left of anything the country has seen in the last 30 years.

Yesterday’s results were head-spinning stuff. In electing Barack Obama president by a solid margin, accompanied by a congress with the biggest Democratic majority since the 1970s, Americans have signalled a dramatic change in the direction of the world’s sole superpower.

The country regarded loftily by many Europeans as hopelessly racist and irredeemably right wing has voted to be ruled by a black man, at the head of a party committed to economic redistribution and a foreign policy rooted in peaceful diplomatic engagement.
The formerly sober admirer of fly-over America meets "change." Obama--is there nothing he can't do?

BTW, Arthur Chrenkoff and Iain Murray provide a less wide-eyed assessment of Obama's America. Peter Berkowitz suggests what Obama would do were he truly post-partisan. And original and former blogger Steven Den Beste gives his verdict: "NOT the end of the world."

1 comment:

OBloodyHell said...

Yesh, we'll see what they say after the economy tanks, the Obama Nation gets humiliated in repeated foreign policy situations, multiple terrorist attacks have occurred on US soil, rolling brownouts have begun, gas is at $6 a gallon, unemployment soars to double digits for the first time in 30 years, and all the dems and Obama get summarily tossed out of office.

I wonder what they'll say then.

As a matter of fact, I wonder what Europe is going to say when Russia starts threatening them and Obama throws them under a bus.