◼ In the face of Obama’s timid foreign policy towards Russia and the Arab world, Republican challenger Mitt Romney is offering real hope - Charles Moore/The Telegraph
Why was Barack Obama so popular globally when he ran for the US presidency four years ago? Because people believed that an eloquent and charismatic first (half-) black president of the United States could do good in the world. The retro-chic poster with a picture of Mr Obama and the single word “HOPE” on it conveyed the entire message.
Four years on, Mr Obama remains eloquent, charismatic and (obviously) 50-per-cent black. He still has considerable global prestige, but his career exhibits a contradiction which, over time, tells against him. He has used that prestige to tell us, in effect, that the president of the United States cannot do all that much good in the world. His message is that American power has lessened, that America is not a special place.
In logic, if you accept this message, you must place less hope in the man who delivers it. He is the advocate of his nation’s decline, and therefore of the reduction of his power. The odd decision to give Mr Obama the Nobel Peace Prize at the start rather than the finish of his presidency turns out to make a sort of sense: he achieved much more by winning the election than by anything that he has done.
...Mr Romney stands in the central tradition of the modern presidency. He thinks America should be strong. He sees decline as a choice to be rejected, rather than a fate to be embraced. He does not suffer from Jimmy Carter-type agonies about American power, and is not troubled by Obama-style, anti-Western “Dreams from my Father”. He is better qualified than Obama to recover the American economic leadership without which nothing much else can happen. He wants to build up defences again and shore up old alliances. The more he asserts these simple, important things, the more he will raise the question which ought to be asked of Mr Obama, as of all other incumbent Western leaders at this dire time – where the hell are you taking us?
