With apologies to Walter Winchell:
Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America - from border to border and coast to
coast, and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press. Barack Obama is back
from his BOFFO European tour, having wowed 'em in Berlin and Paris and
points east, notably Kabul and Baghdad-on-the-Tigris. Comparisons with
John F. Kennedy and even Ronald Reagan were flying even before this
Obamathon began.
Those of us on the dextral side of American politics can only envy our
honorable opponents of sinistral bent for the grace and elegance with which
the newest star of American politics conducted himself during his road tour.
Š Bon Jovi should get such reviews. Š He came, he saw, he wowed. Š If only
the Germans and French elected the next American president, Barack Obama
could start planning his inauguration/coronation now.
And he offered not just style but propriety, even tradition. Asked by a
French reporter to review the failures of the Bush administration, which
he's been doing ever since the start of his presidential campaign, the young
senator respectfully declined, explaining that we in America have a
tradition of not criticizing a sitting president when abroad. What's more,
he approved of the practice and was going to follow it. It was the kind of
comment that made you want to stand up, wave the flag and say: Well done.
Who says Barack Obama is no traditionalist?
If the Obama Tour was a triumph, the troubling thought occurs that, like his
campaign, it was a triumph of style over substance. Talk of his
Kennedyesque grace may be all too accurate, for JFK was scarcely inaugurated
before he invited his administration's and maybe the 20th century's greatest
crisis by appearing weak and uncertain: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Š
There's no telling where a President Obama's first crisis would emanate
from, but Teheran is a good guess. The world is just full of terrible
surprises waiting to happen. Will Iran's president and demagogue-in-chief,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, see this junior senator's eagerness to negotiate
without preconditions as a weakness to be exploited, the way Hitler sensed
Chamberlain's?