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Townhall
Obama
Abroad
By Rich Galen
Jun 22, 2013
Most
Presidents of the United
States love going on an international trip. You get to fly on Air Force
One.
You get to travel around in The Beast that was flown over for your
benefit. You
get to stay in the biggest suite in a Western-style hotel. There are
about 300
staffers from the White House and various Executive Branch agencies who
have
traveled ahead of you or with you to make sure your every whim is
appropriately
dealt with.
And,
you get to meet with foreign
leaders to remind them that, as Chevy Chase might have said on the old
Saturday
Night Live: "I'm the President of the United States … and you're
not."
Essentially,
the bubble in which
Presidents live while they are in Washington, DC simply picks up and
moves to
where ever they need to/want to go.
Presidents
generally get good marks
when they're overseas. It's like that old saying that I can say
whatever I want
about my family, but if you say the same thing about my family you'll
have a
fight on your hands.
But,
if the rule "Politics
stops at the border" was ever true, it isn't any more. In 2009, CBS
News
reported that:
"Senate
Democratic leader
Harry Reid called President Bush "a loser" during a civics discussion
with a group of teenagers at a high school [in Nevada]."
Bush
was in Europe at the time.
No
one has called President Barack
Obama a loser during his recently concluded trip to Europe but it would
be hard
to find a reason to celebrate any accomplishments.
The
National Journal's Michael
Hirsh - not exactly the go-to-guy of American Conservatives - wrote:
"There
were the snarky words
from Vladimir Putin, who expressed an almost Soviet-esque distance from
Washington in his views about Syria. 'Of course our opinions do not
coincide,
the Russian leader said bluntly.
There
was the coded warning from
Chancellor Angela Merkel about spying on friends, and her and Obama's
continuing frostiness over the issue of economic stimulus versus
austerity.
"Above
all, there was Obama's
vague attempt at the Brandenburg Gate to capture some wisp of his past
glory by
pledging vague plans to cut nuclear arms and an even vaguer concept of
'peace
with justice.'"
The
EU countries' economies are
foundering. According to Reuters "Joblessness in the 17-nation currency
area rose to 12.2 percent in April." And among Europeans under 25,
unemployment ranges as high as 50 percent in Greece and Spain and is
well into
double figures just about everywhere…
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall
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