As a retired Managing Director of a global firm, based in London, I evaluated people on a simple matrix. On one side you have "smart or stupid" on the other side you have "passive or aggressive."
There was only one possible combination that caused me undue heartache...stupid and aggressive! Good luck to the Americans, they have picked the chap with the worst possible combination going!!
The UK Telegraph headline tells the story:
President Barack Obama is beginning to look out of his depth
It is lovely to feature in other people's dreams. The problem comes when they wake up. Barack Obama is an eloquent, brainy and likeable man with a fascinating biography. He is not George Bush. Those are great qualities. But they are not enough to lead America, let alone the world.
Note how the foreign press still believes that Obama is all the things they said he was: brainy, eloquent, likeable, with a "fascinating" biography (now what would that be?). Yet ... yet ... they are beginning to think that he's not quite ... "the thing."
What interests me about this article is that the author approves of all of Obama's initiatives, yet somehow finds him wanting. He's all for scrapping the missile shield, for socialized medicine, for the climate change initiatives (capNtrade), Mid-East peace talks, "resetting" relations with Russia, and all the rest. He even thinks that Obama is "defanging" Korea and Iran! So what's the problem?
It seems that the millennium has not arrived. The lion is not lying down with the lamb. Universal peace has not broken out. And then there's this plaintive cry:
But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty - calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values - but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did "Change you can believe in" – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?
But wait; I thought that all of these initiatives were what "HopeNchange" were all about? What did you think that change meant? What do you mean that you're not sure what the strategy is? What in the world makes you uneasy? These are the things you approve of, but somehow when they come down the track and you see them take tangible shape, you don't like what you asked for?
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