Failing an "Early Test"?
In what the UK Telegraph is calling "an early test of Europe's relationship with President Obama," the new President's charm is availing him of significantly less with European leaders than, say, with the American press.
Hold on a minute. Didn't the Democrats promise that once nasty old George W. was gone, the world would embrace America again with open arms? Weren't throngs of hundreds of thousands cheering candidate Obama last summer? Wasn't one of the defining rationales for the Obama (and Clinton) candidacies the ability to work with the world again?
In his first televised interview -- with Al Arabiya television, no less -- President Obama declared that "all too often the United States starts by dictating." That kind of humility, of course, is music to the ears of those who love nothing more than to see America humble -- better, humiliated.
Now, of course, President Obama isn't "dictating." He has asked the Europeans sweetly to take the Guantanamo refugees. And we can see where that has gotten all of us.
Imagine the press reaction if someone less dearly beloved by the MSM had (1) announced plans to close a terrorist prison without a plan about where to relocate the terrorists and (2) had gotten a finger in the eye even from England, the US's closest ally. The screaming would echo all the way to Cuba.