First: Merkel, Sarkozy, and the likely PM Cameron, Berlusconi, are conservatives, as in fact a growing majority of governments, even in cetral Europe and Scandinavia are going. As it has been debunked a thousand times over, the US was not liked before GWB, and there is absolutely NO evidence to suggest that it will be any better under Obama or McCain. Frankly, I’m with my fellow camel-jockey Sandmonkey on this one.

Secondly: Compared the to US the European, are doing comparatively little to nothing for Africa. They are failing to reduce greenhouse gasses miserably while the US advances the technologies and drags India and China into the fray. The fact remains that democrat have made America energy dependant, will substitute any passing fad for a serious measure, and Americans don’t buy it one bit. They oppose drilling – anywhere, promoted the feeblest form of alternative fuels, oppose nuclear power generation, make us dependent on foreign refineries even by way of obstruction, want to regulate milage instead of letting the market figure it out, and so forth. In fact the last Democrat who supported offshore oil drilling appears to have been Gary Hart.

Thirdly: Americans will not elect him to take as constituents people who didn’t vote for him, and who by virtue of their combative and petulant nature do not have America’s interest at heart.


Let me stress one important thing here. Since there are very few voting Americans who have an emotional alignment with Europe that matters to any degree that is greater than their focus on Americans interests, and that Americans generally resist the things that Europeans find important, and vice versa, a Euro-cred is a liability to an American presidential candidate.

If he’s trying to work the JFK model, he might want to take a look at just how unlike any of the modern left Kennedy was. He cut taxes, opposed an enlargement of the welfare state, did brinksmanship with the Soviets to the point of being minutes away from launch, and committed the military to foreign engagements.

This escapade makes BHO look more like Ségolène Royal going to China to build a International cred, which was a miserable failure and an embarrassment.

Your approach to this image construction is that of Obama as a sort of MacArthur figure returning to the Phillipines, yet you’re at pains to not that there HAVE been moments when Germans didn’t protest at the sight of an American President. It was when that president’s attitude and actions mattered a great deal to them, and the phrase they remember from it were “tear down this wall.” The name escapes me, but I believe that president wasn’t a Democrat, relally DID restore hope to America after a beating at the hands of a party with a post-modern world view, and indeed was an agent of change. Otherwise our election are nothing but a spectator sport to most Europeans, who for all their lecturing still carry the kind of old fashioned class/group/tribal hatreds around that would make an European Obama impossible.

That a campaign based on adjectives brings nothing but superlatives from unquestioning supported is a vivid illustration of just how venal Obama’s big-money campaign really is. He was 118 days into his first Senate term when he started on his presidential drive, and from the very moment he was elected to the senate, the Hollywood style, heavily stage managed PR blitz and image production kicked in. In fact I can’t imagine anything a genuine progressive would detest more – think of all the people he’s owe and the leverage that will be pried out of him.

Running as all things to all people, as well as all things ant its’ opposite, raking in twice as much cash as McCain, while only carrying a 4 point lead, one has to wonder: even if the man is sincere and good for the country, would you want the baggage of the campaign of that sort to come with him into the White House?
Not me, pal. I have a long life ahead of me.

The estimate is that almost 20% of the vote across the country are registered or defacto "independants", so no, no election is ever stitched up in America. We are a nation of 300 million people, and opinions are like, well, noses. I can think of a few exceptions among the humorless, but in general everybody has one.

As for being emotional, I can't think of anything which is more of an emotional fantasy than thinking that people outside the American voter base, in this case non-Americans not subject to a direct impact of domestic policy, should figure in any way in an American election. Good representative government means devolving down to the smallest viable entity as a means of making representatives responsible. Ultimately that means soverignty. The idea of muddying that to include any European or a unaccountable transnational framework, if even only in the mind, is distincly antithetical and promotes the same foolish tyranny that (for example) gave China and Russia the opportunity to shoot down sanctions against Zimbabwe. The greater any aggregations, the less a community has rights and resposibility over itself.

Besides, isn't it the people who are idiotically, vividly, and admittedly gaga over the ones being emotional and simpleminded?

It has absolutely nothing to do with healthcarew, etc., etc. It has to do with the lack of evenhanded treatment on the part of the Europeans toward American entities, and their desire to steer US policy in the absence of having coherent and effective policies of their own.

Of course we are supposed to think this to the exclusion of what the KGB and the cubans were doing in central America.

You know, I'm still bewildered by your previous comment... is your idea of sophistication a commenter who advocates both candidates?

To suggest that the US' actions in latin America, or anywhere else occured and occur in a vacuum implies quite directly that people like to think of them in exclusion of anything else that it's a action related to - and you know it. It's what the predictable tirades are about, like people who still shake their little fists and stamp their feet about Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years later - or any other nutty fetish they adopt rather selectively.
Have you heard the same emotionalism from these fine folks about millions of Ukranians just "disappearing"? Of course not! That wouldn't fit the script.

I'd put that in sharp contrast to the fact that Americans at large almost never reveal the extent to which they find most attitudes and comments from Europe unhelpful, frequently irritating, childish, and detestrable.

I also really don't think that there's anything wrong with Americans not being diffident about politics, and if you think your opinions about my opinions to be an expression of such excessive enthusiasm, why don't you express them to faith-healing extacy shown by Obama supporters during his schlag with Hillary?

Want to hear a boo-hoo, Fucher? One mere mention of the phrase "old europe" flummoxed the opinion-makers of a continent for years. Years! Why is that?

David, only in your mind would not mentioning Jesse Helms or George anywhere, either in the subject or in any implicit way in a blog or comment thread somehow become ABOUT Jesse Helms and George Bush.

Is there anything else you need to get out? Some "Ronald Ray-gun" invective perhaps? Some Doctor Strangelove twitching over the mention of self-managed 401(k) plans? 40MillionAmericansWithoutHealthInsurance? The always-useful spectre of the homeless? Going to war for oil? Have I missed anything?