Conservative Boot Camp

Actually the article, which is in part based on a ‘leaked’ report (leaked, my aching *ss) which details the percieved shortcomings of Mr. Obama in the eyes of the French leader.  First on the list is the observation by the French that Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pronouncements are recycled pap that is “aimed at improving the image of the United States”.   So they don’t think much of Mr. Obama’s actual policies, apparently.  Or is it that they really don’t percieve Mr. Obama as actually holding any particular position.

One specific complaint that the French president has about the new American leader is the way he’s treated by the media.  He has expressed his perception that the media are extremely naive about Mr. Obama and that they have a herd mentality with respect to their coverage of him.  Nice of the French to notice what some of us in this country have been complaining about for the past couple of years.  Welcome to the club mes amis.  Now try to imagine living in a land in which fair, balanced and critical reporting by the media have gone the way of the dinosaur.  Can you say ‘demise’?  I knew you could.

Other complaints that the French leader has about Mr. Obama range from the fact that to French eyes, Mr. Obama is a calculating weasel who won’t take any stand until he’s convinced that it won’t harm his popularity.  Mr. Sarkozy relates a couple of instances during the recent G20 and NATO meetings, in which Mr. Obama had to be convinced to take a firm stand, when his alleged principles should have guided him to take that stand without any prodding.  Case in point, at the NATO summit, Turkey objected to the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, as the Secretary General of the military alliance.  As the astute reader will recall, Denmark was the home of the cartoonist who raised a world-wide fuss among Muslims by mocking Mohammed.  Apparently the Muslims in Turkey don’t have it in them to forgive and forget.  Anyway, the French relate how Mr. Obama meekly accepted the Turkish objection to Mr. Rasmussen.  It was only through prodding and urging from Sarkozy and German Chancellor Ms. Merkel that Mr. Obama managed to grow enough of a pair to finally object to the summary objection by Turkey.  But the damage was done.  Mr. Obama was exposed as a weak, unprinicipled leader.

The final indignity alleged by Mr. Sarkozy has to do with Mr. Obama’s intrusion into the issue of Turkish admission to the EU.  The French have led the charge to keep the Turks out of the Union, and Mr. Obama went on record as saying just the opposite.  Then it turns out that Mr. Obama sees the EU as little more than a ‘free-trade’ arrangement.  This is certainly contrary to how the ardent supporters of the EU as a political construct see matters and paints Mr. Obama as either hostile to the aims of the EU, or woefully ignorant of objective of the decades-long push to create a true political union of European nations.

Well, as an American, I welcome all my new, non-Obama-believing friends on the Continent to my camp.  I have the feeling that over the next few years we’re going to get much more crowded here.