Posted on 10/27/2009 11:21:35 AM PDT by ksm1
In a SPIEGEL interview, Charles Krauthammer, the leading voice of America's conservative intellectuals, discusses Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, the president's failures and the state of the United Nations and the international community.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Krauthammer, did the Nobel Commitee in Oslo honor or doom the Obama presidency by awarding him the Peace Prize?
Charles Krauthammer: It is so comical. Absurd. Any prize that goes to Kellogg and Briand, Le Duc Tho and Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchú, and ends up with Obama, tells you all you need to know. For Obama it's not very good because it reaffirms the stereotypes about him as the empty celebrity.
SPIEGEL: Why does it?
Krauthammer: He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.
SPIEGEL: It hardly makes sense to blame him for losing the Olympic bid in one week, and then for winning the Nobel Prize the next.
Krauthammer: He should have simply said: "This is very nice, I appreciate the gesture, but I haven't achieved what I want to achieve." But he is not the kind of man that does that.
SPIEGEL: Should he have turned down the prize?
Krauthammer: He would never turn that down. The presidency is all about him. Just think about the speech he gave in Berlin. There is something so preposterous about a presidential candidate speaking in Berlin. And it was replete with all these universalist clichés, which is basically what he's been giving us for nine months.
SPIEGEL: Why do Europeans react so positively to him?
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
Can’t seem to get the link to work.
Loved the way Kraut put those German liberal interviewers in their place.
Just plain blew them away.
did he speak in english or german?
"He (Obama) has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn't elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine."
Waaaaaay down in the piece he says clearly, that Sarah Palin is NOT a serious contender.
ping... excellent...
Great interview.
See this excerpt:
SPIEGEL: You famously coined the term “Reagan Doctrine” to describe Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. What is the “Obama Doctrine?”
Krauthammer: I would say his vision of the world appears to me to be so naïve that I am not even sure he’s able to develop a doctrine. He has a view of the world as regulated by self-enforcing international norms, where the peace is kept by some kind of vague international consensus, something called the international community, which to me is a fiction, acting through obviously inadequate and worthless international agencies. I wouldn’t elevate that kind of thinking to a doctrine because I have too much respect for the word doctrine.
Rumor has it he had an affair with Helen Thomas. It IS contageous.
Don’t believe every rumor you hear. He hasn’t clawed his own eyes out, so he clearly hasn’t seen her naked.
He is the man.
Krauthammer nails it, again.
She isn't, right now.
But she could be, which is why the Dems & their cohorts are so keen to destroy her early.
I believe a lot of her future credibility with the electorate will depend upon the contents of the forthcoming book.
Don’t you think, too, that something happens to you when you’ve been out in the real world. You get battle hardened. Condi Rice, is a much wiser, much more astute observer of human nature, and able to handle the media. She’s also culivated a knowledge from meeting world leaders.
If you could fuse 1/3 of world affairs experience of Condi Rice, into Sarah Palin you’d have someone whom you could not debate. I mean can you picture Hillary trying to trip her up?
What do you think of Petraeus/Palin for 2012? Has a kind of ring to it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.