Barack Obama is back to being candidate Obama instead of President Obama, making a campaign-style trip to Elkhart, Indiana. If you think it wasn’t a campaign redux, just read the New York Times (h/t Mark Hemmingway):
Wrapping himself in the mandate of his election last November, Mr. Obama sounded like a candidate all over again, scolding greedy Wall Street bankers and pointedly rejecting Republican critics for sticking with what he called a failed philosophy. At one point, he spoke about people with as many as five homes, which sounded like a reference to his opponent last fall, Senator John McCain.
I dunno’ — doesn’t he think we should do better than to ”posture and bicker” or resort to such “childish things” at a time like this?
And why did he go there? Well, to highlight the high unemployment. But, as Michael Barone explains, it’s not clear the Obama administration will help matters:
But why does Elkhart have such exceptionally high unemployment? The answer is that it is, as a promotional website tells us, “The RV Capital of the World.” RV sales are down this year, and I don’t suppose they’ll be helped by the cap-and-trade system that Obama and most Democrats want to impose on our economy. Yes, Elkhart County trended hugely to Obama. George W. Bush carried it 70 percent to 29 percent in 2004, and, Obama lost it by only 55 percent to 44 percent in 2008. Obama made those gains because of what people in Elkhart County thought George Bush failed to deliver. Now Obama must deliver himself.
This is the first president we’ve had in a long time (ever?) who sounded more presidential when he was a candidate. Maybe it’s just all wearing a bit thin.
“Barack Obama loves to talk about the U.S. excerising its power by example, not might.”– Abe Greenwald
This is exactly what Obama did by refusing to participate. See, that’s the “example” part and it demonstrates “leadership.” And Italy is following Obama’s lead. See how easy this Smart Power stuff is?
Leadership would have meant not participating in the Durban II planning conference at all. Once that became a well telegraphed fiasco, it would have meant making an unambiguous declaration that the United States will not participate. Instead we have an ambiguous statement that the US was pulling out conditionally unless the language of the draft was altered. At some point the moral necessity of not lending any further legitimacy to this circus should have been clear. One can only imagine what may transpire if, after two unabashed hatefests, there are some last minute modifications to the draft language to make it less overt. Then you would still be left to wonder just what the US is going to do, something that should never have been in doubt.
Maybe, though, Obama’s position of making the attempt is going to give these European leaders the political cover to do the right thing.
same agenda as the Interfaith Youth Conference.
I got an e-mail today from NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg’s organization which keeps track of anti-Israel bias among supposedly apolitical “non-governmental organizations.” This e-mail was devoted to the NGOs’ reaction to the U.S. decision to withdraw from Durban II. Here’s a quote:
I knew HRW was bad, but this is even worse than I expected from them. It almost makes the Obama administration’s behavior in this department look good by comparison.
I should have added, in my comment #5, that seeing this garbage from HRW confirms Mr. Greenwald’s point. If Obama had said that the principles underlying Durban II are rotten, HRW could not get away with this kind of obfuscation.
I don’t agree with the statement that attributes to Italian Government “a fundamental naivete about the larger anti-Semitic framework behind the offense”. The truth is that, in an EU increasingtly ruled by dhimmis, no european government can do more, especially if this means going further than US.