Victor Davis Hanson: Why the Liberal Anger Over the Asian Tour?
[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.]
There is a surprising amount of liberal discomfort, here and abroad, with the underwhelming nature of President Obama's Asian tour. Apparently this results from displeasure over the lack of any substantive dialogue with the Chinese about climate change (and China's inordinate coal burning), censorship, the lack of human rights, Tibet, unfair trade practices, etc. (In the president's defense, if we are going to borrow at an annual rate of $1.6 trillion for further entitlement spending, some of it floated at low interest from the Chinese, we are not going to have a lot of leverage with our creditors.)
The liberal discontent (even in the New York Times, of all places) is strange, inasmuch as Obama campaigned on exactly this sort of multilateralism and deference to the U.N. In this new approach, America doesn't try to "get" anything from anyone, but simply listens, and as a guest abroad defers to its hosts. After all, Obama has rejected in explicit language the notion of American exceptionalism. The Nobel Peace Prize committee correctly sensed Obama's departure from the past and preemptively awarded him the prize, both as praise for his utopian rhetoric and as a reminder than the first multilateral president should govern as if the United States is merely one among many nations in the world.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy sensed this as well at the U.N., in reference to Iran. I think most nations have caught on and are making the necessary adjustments, and the Asian tour will be followed by many more like it: inspirational photo-ops, soaring "I am the first Pacific, African, Latin American, etc. president," assurances that change abroad can happen as it has in America (as exemplified by Obama himself, of course), implicit "reset" criticism of the previous unilateral administration, and hope-and-change rhetoric about new multilateral partnerships, followed by a town-hall question-and-answer session (probably censored)...
Read entire article at Private Papers (website of Victor Davis Hanson)
There is a surprising amount of liberal discomfort, here and abroad, with the underwhelming nature of President Obama's Asian tour. Apparently this results from displeasure over the lack of any substantive dialogue with the Chinese about climate change (and China's inordinate coal burning), censorship, the lack of human rights, Tibet, unfair trade practices, etc. (In the president's defense, if we are going to borrow at an annual rate of $1.6 trillion for further entitlement spending, some of it floated at low interest from the Chinese, we are not going to have a lot of leverage with our creditors.)
The liberal discontent (even in the New York Times, of all places) is strange, inasmuch as Obama campaigned on exactly this sort of multilateralism and deference to the U.N. In this new approach, America doesn't try to "get" anything from anyone, but simply listens, and as a guest abroad defers to its hosts. After all, Obama has rejected in explicit language the notion of American exceptionalism. The Nobel Peace Prize committee correctly sensed Obama's departure from the past and preemptively awarded him the prize, both as praise for his utopian rhetoric and as a reminder than the first multilateral president should govern as if the United States is merely one among many nations in the world.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy sensed this as well at the U.N., in reference to Iran. I think most nations have caught on and are making the necessary adjustments, and the Asian tour will be followed by many more like it: inspirational photo-ops, soaring "I am the first Pacific, African, Latin American, etc. president," assurances that change abroad can happen as it has in America (as exemplified by Obama himself, of course), implicit "reset" criticism of the previous unilateral administration, and hope-and-change rhetoric about new multilateral partnerships, followed by a town-hall question-and-answer session (probably censored)...