I enjoy reading things from Europe and Great Britain, especially on the US Presidency. The warticles tend to be thoughtful and considerate - if a little probing at times to better undestand the American mind as it votes for its national leader.
The articles and reporting have a far different flavor to them than do American liberal or conservative pieces.
For example, the piece from the BBC puts it this way about Mr. Obama - then and now:
"He believed in his own importance as a symbol of change. But a symbol of
change and an agent of change are two very different things."
and,
"Austen Goolsbee, the Chicago economics professor who helped steer policy through the first part of the Obama administration, described the bad news - coming in a blur of awful figures - as "just one terrifying thing after another".
He had told Obama after one particularly grim session that it might have been the worst background briefing any president-elect had had since Lincoln's in 1861, when the Union was about to break apart.
Obama had glanced up at him and replied: "Goolsbee, that's not even my worst briefing this week.""
and,
"As an explainer, Bill Clinton has been far more effective over the past few weeks, to the point where Obama calls him "the Secretary of State for Explaining Stuff".
Yet I came away believing the real reason for that shrivelling optimism of 2008 was deeper.
This is a great country which is losing its economic dominance and has not found any kind of consensus about how it might be recovered. Politicians have loaded the country with debt, much of it now owned by China"
Read the whole article here.
Den
"He believed in his own importance as a symbol of change. But a symbol of change and an agent of change are two very different things." I wish the American public had realized this in 2008.
Posted by: sdcarlson | November 05, 2012 at 07:04 PM