We aren’t the change we’ve been waiting for?

Even my kids have figured out that the best negotiation is one in which you negotiate in good will from a position of strength.  Barack Obama probably agrees with this principle, but it’s becoming obvious that he’s misidentified the source of America’s strength in any negotiation.  When presidents from prior administrations (excepting Carter, of course) entered into dealings with the Europeans, they understood that the strength that formed the basis for any negotiation was the American economy, American military power, and America’s reputation as world leader.

Our narcissist in chief, however, went to Europe firmly believing and loudly expressing that America’s traditional virtues on the national scene are problems, rather than sources of strength.  Within minutes of setting foot on European soil, he apologized for our capitalism, our military, and our attitude, effectively neutralizing all three power points for effective American negotiation.

In place of America’s bases for negotiation strength (wealth, military power and status), he offered only one:  himself.  He is the change Europe has been waiting for.  Thus, he proclaimed that “I would like to think that with my election, we’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world.”

It couldn’t be more plain that, in his own mind, he, BHusseinO, is the personification of what little remains of American strength, and his mere existence is the point from which all negotations start.  To this Ivy League educated man (that is, a man who had America handed to him on a silver plated, affirmative action platter), everything else about America is irrelevant or even embarrassing.

Unsurprisingly for anyone not caught up in BHusseinO’s narcissistic delusions of grandeur, the Europeans have spit in Obama’s eye.  Even Obama himself may slowly be facing up to a reality from which a lifetime in affirmative action America shielded him, has had to concede that maybe, just maybe, his perfect wonderfulness is not sufficient to change the world:  “We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.”  (That statement was in response to the fact that the Muslim world has not forgiven American its many sins simply because America elected a former Muslim as president.)

Incidentally, speaking of former Muslim, Charles Johnson shows a picture of Bush apparently bowing to the Saudi King.  In fact, he’s not.  He’s getting a medal put around his neck.  As someone who has watched a billion Olympic medal award ceremonies it’s normal for the recipient, if his head is higher than the bestower (or if he feels that his head is higher) to bow his head so that the medal can easily be slipped on.  This is not a bow of subservience, as Obama performed.  It is a utilitarian gesture.