you are the media you consume.

Some of you appear to have missed the question mark in my title and my conclusion that Bush was stupider still.  You also appear to have missed my praise for much of what Obama has achieved in my opening paragraph.  

My criticism is reserved for his foreign policy and here there has been no substantive rebuttal of any point I have made.  Sure, Congress also has a role, as does the Department of State.  I could have been just as critical of Hillary Clinton. But ultimately the buck stops with the President and it is Americans who suffer if the US Government follows a stupid line of foreign policy.  

I also know Americans aren't much given to worrying about what the rest of the world thinks about their foreign policy and if you don't care, so be it.  I just thought some of you might like to know that the almost universal admiration which Obama evoked on his election is slowly giving way to dismay.  The feeling abroad is that US foreign policy is now little better that that under Bush.

And there is one other vital difference.  Whereas before the US was the unrivalled world military, economic and political superpower which could attempt to do more or less what it wanted, now the US is being challenged both economically and politically.  What you could get away with before is often no longer possible.

So unless the US adopts a much smarter foreign policy than it has in the past it is destined for a much diminished role in world affairs.  Your choice.  I just thought I'd let you know.  And NO, I wouldn't prefer a world dominated by Hamas or any one other world power.

Frank's Home Page and Diary Index

Or would you prefer it be assertive in some ways, with the I/P situation and less assertive, in the Middle East generally ? It does look a little scattergun and inconsistent.

However much the US likes to don the white hat of moral righteousness as it justifies its acts of world interference, history shows that the US is no different from any other country: It is only concerned with its own interests such as resource control and internal security. Foreign policy is NOT about making the world better, or at least it hasn't since Roosevelt; it's about ensuring that the administration looks good to significant parts of the US electorate. Latterly that has degenerated into persuading significant donors that their corporate interests are best ensured with the current party in power.

We may consider that Obama looks weak in foreign policy, but that's because we aren't seeing it as he does. He's inherited a country whose power and reach have been seriously compromised by his immediate predecessor, so he feels obliged to continue the rhetorical bluster of recent history, but must tack, gracefully or otherwise, to reality.

We want him to do the right thing, always. However, I've come to doubt that our views of the "right" thing and his even coincide to any significant part. He is a centre-left consensualist, which in European terms makes him quite right wing. He only appears liberal in comparison to republicans.

If you wanted somebody who'd do the "right" thing in european terms, we'd have Kucinich, Gravel or Sanders. But such a candidate is absolutely unelectable in USA. As Rumsfeldt nearly said "the world must work with the President we have, not the one we want".

keep to the Fen Causeway

Obama is a victory for the left over more right wing contenders. (Scary thought that is. It was even kind of frightening at the time.)

I had originally pegged Obama as right wing. With his program of assassinations (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations) of American citizens whom he does not like - I was wrong. Hell - if I was voting in US elections, I would have voted for him. Unfortunately, he crossed a line with his program on assassinations, and it looks like Orange is reluctantly willing to cross it too.

My gut feeling is that there is more loyalty than I would expect in other countries from those who are at the very edge politically of their chosen party.  I think that this is a "feature" of the US system. For a true test, perhaps a detailed comparison of Britain and the US would work - just how much opposition was there to Tony Blair within Labour.

The US political system seems to be truly messed up.  It is highly resilient to change, and it co-opts people - including presidents - a true melting pot. I cringe when I hear the word bipartisan, and think "one party state".

If I understand correctly, the bottom line for the difference in the US between Obama and others is domestic policy and the supreme court. I can't help but feel that it is only on point 8 that you manage to say something that directly criticizes Obama's policies , as opposed to the political system in general. It would be nice if Obama had what it takes to offer a different foreign policy than the republican party, and he did run on that platform... He even delivered - the western world is no longer slowly isolating the US. I'm not at all sure that this is a bonus for the western world, but it probably is a bonus for US establishment. Maybe it also makes members of Orange feel better.

The US is on the way down (along with a lot of other countries I suspect). Now is the time for the US to set the stage that it will in the future have to live and work in. Later will be too late. Unfortunately, Obama is not up to the task, and even Orange appears to be unwilling to confront the policies of their leader.

Orange seems to be following the maxim "My country right or wrong". "My party right or wrong". "My leader right or wrong."

I think you spoke at Orange instead of to Orange.

He's failed to close other things as well.

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sapere aude

My take is that Obama is failing as badly as Bush did, but for very different reasons. Bush really believed in unilateralism, in American imperialism. He used America's position in the world to try and impose the neocons' will on the rest of the globe, regardless of the conditions or consequences. And so he failed.

Obama's approach is different. It's not at all a rejection of Bushism - after all, Obama has doubled down in Afghanistan and refuses to close Guantanamo Bay or Bagram. Instead Obama tends to shy away from confrontation. Not out of any ideological choice, but out of an odd personal unwillingness to challenge or confront anyone. With Honduras, Israel, and the stolen Iranian election, we saw a common thread of Obama being totally unwilling to stand up for democracy and fair treatment.

Unfortunately we see exactly the same thing in his domestic policy. For example, Obama would not fight for the repeal of the military's ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. When it became clear Congress had the votes to fully repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Obama hesitated and showed himself reluctant to anger some in the military by supporting repeal. So he demanded and won a watering down of the repeal, all so he could avoid having a public confrontation with the military. Of course, it was perfectly OK for him to confront the progressive activists demanding repeal.

The consistent thread appears to be that Obama, like many Americans of his generation, has internalized the notion that conservatives and corporations are extremely powerful, that it is wrong and foolish to try and oppose them, so all you can realistically and sensibly do is just accommodate them. He holds that belief whether it's in domestic or in foreign policy.

The overall thread is that Obama is simply unwilling to lead - on almost anything. He is a very reactive president, and that does not serve US interests even when you define them in a non-imperial, progressive fashion.

And the world will live as one

As for Obamatrolls on DK which tried to tear your diary apart I think they were mostly attracted by its title, never reading your points. I remember there were many foolish comments like "No. Another question" - they read only question in the headline, answered (to it) and did not bother to read further.

I don't know how you feel about being attacked undeservedly by DK's "musclemen with zero IQ". Reaction to such bullying may depend on one's depth of conviction (and knowledge), whether one feels that nothing wrong with his (her) views and continues to express and defend them no matter what.

Internet blogging may be not enlightened internet democracy where everyone is tolerant to other's rants or flaps, but often degenerates into internet bullying like in schoolyard with difference that is not material, not physical. DK moderators do not seem to bother much about such permanent gallery on their forum, that is up to them, however they uprated your diary because of you past work.

I don't think it's all that bad and I'm not surprised at what has happened so far.

There also should be a lot less separation between domestic policy and foreign policy. Domestic policy has a huge impact on foreign policy.

Obama is dealing with a recalcitrant congress, and there's no way there is enough political conviction to get a total progressive agenda passed. But there are strategic decisions one might make to push the ball forward, and health care was one such decision. It will have far-reaching ramifications on American policies, both foreign and domestic. Of course, the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision will likely have even more far reaching implications.

I'm also not certain why you said American progressives have been cowed by conservatives and the corporate media elite into accepting their inferiority. It's clear that progressives in the USA are inferior.

Given the USA's electoral college and campaign finance laws, we have a flawed democracy. The system here is rigged from the start against progressives. Obama is operating under that system.

There also isn't any counterbalance to the USA in the world. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we saw European leadership that conflicted with US policy? But we don't.

Who can deny that our American world is in trouble?  Or that our troubles, like our wars, have a momentum of their own against which we generally no longer raise our voices in protest; that we have, in a sense, been disarmed as citizens?

You, the graduating class of 2010, are caught in a system; then again, so are our leaders.  In recent years, we’ve had two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who could not be mistaken for one another.  In most obvious ways -- style, thinking, personality, politics, sensibility, impulses -- they couldn’t be more different, as have been the ways they have approached problems.  One was a true believer in the glories of American military and executive power, the other is a manager of a declining power and what passes for a political “pragmatist” in our world.  Yet, more times than is faintly comfortable, the two of them have ended up in approximately the same policy places -- whether on the abridgement of liberties, the expansion of the secret activities of military special operations forces across the Greater Middle East, the CIA drone war in the Pakistani borderlands and elsewhere, the treatment of prisoners, our expanding wars, Pentagon budgets, offshore oil drilling and nuclear power, or other topics which matter in our lives.

This should be more startling than it evidently is for most Americans.  If the policies of these two disparate figures often have a tweedledum-and-tweedledee-ish look to them, then what we face is not specific party politics or individual style, but a system with its own steamroller force, and its own set of narrow, repetitive “solutions” to our problems.  We also face an increasingly militarized, privatized government, its wheels greased by the funds of giant corporations, that now regularly seems to go about the business of creating new Katrinas.

TomDispatch

The Presidency is apparently window-dressing on the permanent (oligarch) government.  What any one person can do in that job (especially after all the favours taken and owed to get that far) is pretty limited.

Greetings America, you now have your very own Tony Blair:  slim, handsome, articulate (nay, glib even), educated, charming... and he still has to dance with them as brung 'im.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...