"Oceania was Always at War with Eurasia" of the Day

Remember the meme that electing Obama would cause America to be better loved in the world? Moisés Naím in Foreign Policy explains how that's working out:

It is not easy to have such a popular guy in the White House. For too many governments—those of Cuba and Iran, for example—having an easy-to-bash figure in the Oval Office is indispensable. And we all know people for whom anti-Americanism is almost a basic instinct and an automatic inspiration for their political views. Thus, the high approval ratings that Barack Obama enjoys almost everywhere are a very problematic trend for those in need of a U.S. president who can be easily portrayed as one more executor of the deeds of the devilish American empire.

That is why the "Bushification" of Barack Obama will become fashionable.

The morphing of Obama into George W. Bush is the inevitable next chapter in a narrative common outside the United States, one that began with erudite explanations of why the American political establishment would never allow a black man to become president, that continued with the surprise of Obama’s victorious campaign, that followed with the eruption of emotions during his inauguration, and that then led to widespread concerns about the difficulty Obama faces in meeting the impossibly high expectations created by his election. In the next phase of this story, many will begin to claim that, in practice, there is not much difference between George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama. Or, as the poetic president of Venezuela has already said, they are "the same miasma"; that is to say, that they are both malignant effusions emanating from rotten material.

And it’s not just Hugo Chávez who’s making comparisons; "Bushing" Obama will become a global trend. For the Iranian regime, it will be important to demonstrate that regardless of the fact that the middle name of the new president is Hussein and that in Farsi "Obama" means "he’s with us," in reality Obama remains, just as his predecessor, the executive of the Great Satan.

See also Christian Brose in Foreign Policy:

My hunch, and my hope, is that Obama will be a successful president, not because he’ll totally change the foreign policy he’ll inherit from Bush, but because he’ll largely continue it.