Posted on 11/05/2008 3:12:54 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
CNN) -- Europe's expectations of a Barack Obama presidency are vibrant, vast and probably incapable of fulfillment by any president, let alone one who will come to office in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis and with huge, unfinished business in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is no doubting the buzz and the optimism that the election victory of an African-American candidate has brought.
Most in Europe are instinctively America's friends and, after the unilateralism of the Bush years, they want to have something to love about America again.
Obama's arrival, they hope and believe, will give them that opportunity.
President-elect Obama's brilliant rhetoric, which has electrified crowds at home and reached many not previously interested in politics, has appealed to European instincts.
Europeans tend mostly to identify with the leftish end of the American political spectrum. Europeans want change in America and in the world and they see Obama as a purveyor of change.
As the former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind put it during the campaign: "It's a touch of the John F. Kennedys and the Camelot-type excitement. That doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy. It doesn't necessarily mean it's justified -- but it's a product of Obama's personality."
Europeans will hope especially for President-elect Obama to repair some of the dents in America's image which have reflected on them too. They want and expect to see Guantanamo Bay closed down for good. They want an end to the use of so-called "extraordinary rendition" -- the soft name for what has, in effect, been kidnapping and torture by the CIA -- that has besmirched the name of democracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
How's this one ...
GREAT !
bump
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