Perhaps it was because I was 5000 miles away from this desk or perhaps because of jet lag on the way, I hadn’t been sleeping well. Therefore, I did some thinking during those ungodly wakeful hours.
As I have confessed before, my travelling partner was and is a “recovering Obama voter.” By that I mean that she voted for Obama in 2008 but is very discouraged by his long list of broken promises since. Not that we argue about this stuff, because we don’t, but sometimes we get closer than others.
At a quiet dinner, I was asked if the man (Obama) had done, or could do, anything right. I paused, and not for any dramatic effect, because I needed to think. Try as I might, I could not come up with anything. Mentally, I raced through transparent government, Gitmo closure, civil trials for terrorists, abolition of the “Patriot Act,” and the end of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, we all know what happened to those promises and so I said that I could not come up with one accomplishment but that I was open to listen to suggestions. I was tempted to mention his Nobel Peace Prize and the worthiness of the award considering his attacks on Libya but I demurred. I also thought to myself that if the Libyans want a new Muslim leader why not send ‘em ours. Would solve two problems in one. But in the interests of harmony, I kept all these thoughts to myself and we agreed to settle on sharing a dessert and coffee.
Now make no mistake, the lady is exceptionally bright and very well read and informed. However, she is a lifelong Democrat and old habits die only with difficulty.
There are several benefits to foreign travel including the opportunity to see how others spend their lives. And if one is prepared to listen, a tourist may learn how he or she is regarded by the world at large. Thus it was interesting to listen to the British talk about Obama as they perceive him now compared to the hype of the election and just after.
Now it’s true that Obama seems to have gone out of his way to piss off the Brits by such thoughtless and petty actions as returning a gift of a bust of Churchill and awarding the Queen an iPod loaded with Obama’s speeches. But these trivialities aside, the overwhelming perception on that side of the Atlantic is that the man cannot make a decision and seems to be obsessed with how the opinion polls will view him.
At one point during this conversation, I opined that Obama’s inability for decisive action was purely a result of his lack of experience and ability. Alternatively, I asked whether it was because he feels he has to consult the hordes of advisers with which he has surrounded himself, all of which seem to hail from the senior common rooms of Ivy-League academia and none of which have any real-world experience. In other words, everything becomes a subject for learned debate.
Then returning to this country I was gratified to hear a congressional Democrat actually say about his fearless leader that, “it was important to listen to what he says and not how just how he says it”.
It was also very telling that in the first of the Obama reelection ads, the great man did not speak but left it up to nameless, one presumes, actors to do his talking for him which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
All this leads me to have hope that he is far from invulnerable next year provided the GOP can find a worthy spokesman and it ain’t Newt.
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