President Barack Obama is going home with non, nein and no ringing in his ears

Daily Telegraph ^ | April 7, 2009 | Irwin Stelzer

[Plutarch]

Fugedaboutit. For those of you who don't speak New York, that's "forget about it", the most emphatic of the negatives in a New Yorker's repertoire. But it has nothing like the power to influence events that the "non", "nein" and "no" that capped Barack Obama's tour of Europe have. It is one thing to attract a crowd in Berlin, a city in which politicians have historically been successful in attracting mass audiences, or to wow several hundred adolescents in Strasbourg and thousands of adults in Prague with talk of a nuclear-free world, and quite another to get the elected representatives of those crowds to shoulder a fair share of the burden of the fight against Islamist terrorists.

The leaders of Europe came naked to the Nato meeting last weekend, shorn of the cover provided by Bush-hatred. As the American commentator Robert Kagan puts it: "George W Bush did the Europeans a great favour by giving them the best excuse for inaction in transatlantic history." Europe's leaders have always claimed they would co-operate with America in all things, were it not for that toxic Texan with his unilateralist belief in spreading democracy and free markets.

[...excerpt]

[Plutarch]

Geez, this perspective seems a lot different than that the monolithic uniview of the US MSM, which is that Obama held them spellbound in admiration, each country vieing with the next to do the most for our wonderful President.

[nomad]

Great news none the less.One more crack in the cult of personality.