Obama the Almost Messiah-Like Healer Who Would Plant a Garden of Eden Over the Top

Obama's stumbling backward is likely to

be enough to disappoint all those Europeans who had expectations that Obama would be an almost messiah-like healer. It was expected that he would demolish all of the ugly monuments from the Bush era and then, together with Al Gore, plant a Garden of Eden over the top, through which he would drive fuel-efficient compacts from Chrysler.

Thus Brussels Journal's Soeren Kern quotes Die Tageszeitung (danke schön zu Power Line via Larwyn). And what is that German periodical and others carping about? Why is it that they are feeling that the One is letting them down? Because not enough is being done by the White House to show, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that America, under Bush, was nothing but a rogue, criminal entity, all of whose actions were invariably wrong and nefarious, and that anybody opposing Bush/America (such as Germany) was not only right but downright saintly to be so doing!

The Hamburg-based left-leaning Der Spiegel, which was one of the most hyperactive purveyors of anti-Americanism during the Bush presidency, has lately been back in full form. In recent weeks, the magazine has published a series of articles that are unusually critical of Obama. Some titles include: “From Mania to Distrust: Europe’s Obama Euphoria Wanes,” “Torturing for America,” “American Gays and Lesbians Feel Betrayed by Obama,” and “GM Insolvency Proves America’s Global Power is Waning.”

One of the favourite tactics used by Der Spiegel is to interview American left-wingers in order to “prove” that the United States is every bit as bad as the German media say it is.

…Underscoring the hypocrisy that underpins so much of the anti-Americanism in Europe, many newspapers have expressed resentment over Obama’s unwillingness to allow his European colleagues to bask in the limelight of joint photo opportunities.

Here, though, is the only part where the European newspapers have a real point — although for wrong reasons (i.e., just another one in a long litany of "reasons" for being anti-American) — that the Apologizer-in-Chief will freely allow for photo ops with the likes of Chávez, Putin, and Medvedev, albeit not (or far fewer) for the likes of Merkel and Sarkozy.

Maybe the center-right Times of London says it best. In an article titled “Eventually, We Will All Hate Obama Too,” the paper predicts: “So Barack Obama, en fête around the world, will one day learn that there is no magical cure for the envy of others. What makes America the indispensable power (and even more indispensable in the era of the new China), is precisely what makes anti-Americanism inevitable.”