Worth reading

Robert Kagan elucidates how Obama's foreign policies are no different from that of Bush. In a tongue-in-cheek manner he notes that Obama had the world at "hello" while convincing them that he was different that Bush. But the substance of American foreign policy has not changed at all. Though Obama is immensely helped by a pliant media, Kagan reads between their lines, and shows how its a no change which you can believe in. Whatever happened to the swooning of world audiences, the disappointment seems to be arriving a bit too soon. Whether it be China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, the spin might be new but it's essentially a case of old wine in a new bottle, and nothing more. I'm sure the swinging crowds in Kenya, Middle East etc., would sooner or later realize that they made a cuckoo out of themselves by buying into media rhetoric.

 

Worth noting:

Thus the Times's Peter Baker writes that "Obama appears poised to return to a more traditional American policy of dealing with the world as it is rather than as it might be." Set aside what a funny sentence that is to anyone with even scant knowledge of American history and its traditions -- remember Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton? The more interesting question is whether the Bush administration ever seriously pursued a "freedom agenda."

No matter what the rhetoric, America has always worked to further its interests, just as it should. And so we must. Drill baby drill...in your politicians' mind.

 

Another one is by economist-cum-columnist Robert Samuelson. He skewers the central buzzword of Obamanomics: responsibility. Whatever his rhetoric, Samuelson finds Obama wanting on a principal count, sounding him out on "entitlement psychology--or the belief that government benefits once conferred should never be revoked." (Like reservations!) "Overworked rhetoric" has its downsides. The momentary overconfidence it generates can quickly give in to great depression.