The Cult of Obama has officially been consummated
Friday, October 9th, 2009 at
7:50 am
Barack Obama has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
No further comment (or… “no comment”).
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I think the Right tends to underestimate how extremely distasteful the Reagan/Bush/Bush years have been globally and how powerful being “Not Bush” is. Obama is the Anti-Bush and is apparently being awarded for it, even though he’s done nothing specific to merit this prize.
No, not “globally”. Mostly in liberal Europe. It’s become much more political rather than being about actual peace.
My blog post on this is up.
I would think that at least some studies and measures (along with a great deal of anecdotal evidence) would support the notion that Obama is enjoying a nearly world-wide popularity.
Here, we see that the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (NBI) shows the US being at the top of the list of most admired nations since Obama’s taken office – jumping up six spots to do so.
Here is another poll (Pew) with similar findings – although it does point out that the Muslim world still is dissatisfied with the US (although not as much with Obama), and that Israel was less satisfied with Obama.
Another Pew poll had similar results last year, before his election.
Anecdotally, people have been hearing stories from across the globe about how impressed the world is with Obama. I’ve a preacher friend in Muslim Morocco who says that they are VERY impressed with Obama there – that people took off from work to watch the inauguration! Can you imagine the same thing being said about any president in the last 30 years? Or ever?
Do you really doubt Obama’s global popularity and, if so, based on what?
Popular for what? Impressed with what? Nobel Prize for what? Ronald Reagan was popular in Lech Walesa’s Poland (as well as many former Soviet satellite states) for standing up to the Soviets. Agree with that sentiment or not, at least it was for something. There was no NBI back then; it would have been interesting to see.
And as you note, the Israelis are not as keen on Obama. When your life is on the line, you have different priorities. Many of these other countries are being protected by weapons bought from or run by the US. They can afford to be idealistic.
I think the polls, as they usually do, measure emotion mostly, and the Nobel award is done mostly by liberal Europeans. I don’t think it’s a good measure of world opinion.
And let’s not forget how fleeting popularity is. Dubya was very popular after 9/11, so long as he did nothing to deal with the injustice of the situation. Start fighting back, and those protected by our troops and our weapons start to tut-tut everything you do.
Emotion? No, I don’t think so. Not any more than those who have an attachment to Reagan had it for emotional, not logical reasons. He was an affable, easy-to-like kind of guy who seemed sort of sweet. Never mind the war crimes, the selling of arms to thugs and terrorists, the policy changes that led to vast increases in homelessness. He seemed like a good guy, therefore, people liked him.
Obama is popular NOT so much for what he’s done (he’s not done much yet), but for the great American ideals he stands for. In support of Justice for all, and justice for the poor; in support of reasonable foreign policy, not cowboy diplomacy; opposition to torture and wars of convenience; in support of responsible, sustainable living; in support of living as a member of the world community, not the boss of it.
THESE ideals are why Obama is popular, because he represents these ideals to the world. Now, if he does not live up to those ideals, his popularity certainly will drop. But the people of the world are wild about America’s ideals, I think, and now that we have someone who so SEEMS to represent those ideals, America’s hit it big.
Now, as Obama said, it’s time to live up to those ideals.
So, I presume you don’t really think Obama is not popular around the world? You just don’t agree with his popularity? Or did you have some reason (ie, evidence) to suggest that he isn’t popular globally, but “mostly in Liberal Europe”?
Heh, Reagan was most decidedly not popular in the “world” that thought that he was certainly going to start a nuclear war with the USSR, especially after walking away from the table in Iceland. Instead, he got their badly needed attention. The rest we know. Reagan was popular with his base because of this no-nonsense policy, and after 70 years of “containment”, Communism fell.
If Obama’s worldwide popularity predates his very election, and if his popularity and Peace Prize are solely because of his words and not his deeds, then this is simply ephemeral and based on pure emotion. If this is what it means to have the world “like us”, that’s a pretty darn low bar. Say the right words, and you’re in.
That’s the MO of liberals, frankly. Conservatives judge you on your deeds, as they did with Bush (very many were disappointed in his and Congress’ spending habits). To liberals, which the Nobel committee is full of, this is not as important. Doesn’t matter what Jimmy Carter did. Twenty years after his actual peace efforts, his prize was mostly to give Bush a black eye. Obama hasn’t done a thing but speak well about the “right things”, and the most prestigious prize for Peace on the planet goes to him.
Health care reform was “popular” when Obama made speeches about it. Emotion ruled the day. But after he couldn’t ram it through Congress by August and thus once people found out the actual policy behind it, it’s popularity tanked.
So yes, he is popular if you regard polls of emotion as your gauge. I’m waiting for Obama to actually do something to see how that changes.
if his popularity and Peace Prize are solely because of his words and not his deeds, then this is simply ephemeral and based on pure emotion.
Speaking the right words is a good starting place. Emotion has nothing to do with it. We want someone who will turn away from the Cowboy Diplomacy of Bush/Reagan-types. Obama spoke the right words saying he was NOT of that sort, but he was of the Right values (justice, peace, tolerance, opposition to evil – not support of it, etc).
Logically, we would want someone who espouses THOSE values and words are a starting point of where we judge someone. If someone is saying they want to continue Reagan/Bush type diplomacy, then that’s a big red flag.
Emotion has nothing to do with it. Values, is what it is about. Obama has the right ones, in his words, at least. Bush/Reagan/McCain/Palin don’t.
And you can bet that if he doesn’t live up to those words, we will hold him accountable.
Emotion is for the fear-mongers of the world (commies! terrorists! boogetymen!!), not those seeking justice and peace.
The fact is that the Nobel Peace Prize has become a joke in recent years. It has become nothing more than a propaganda piece by leftists to bash policies they don’t like.
1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev
1992 – Rigoberta Menchú Tum
1994 – Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin
2001 – The United Nations ( U.N.) and Kofi Annan
2002 – Jimmy Carter
2004 – Wangari Maathai
2005 – International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Mohamed ElBaradei
2007 – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.
Gorbachev is an unrepentant communist who would have kept the Soviet Union around if he had his way, Menchu invented most of her biography, Arafat was a terrorist, the UN is a harbor for human rights abusers, Annan refused to take action that would have prevented the Rwanda massacres and presided over the Oil-for-Food scam, Carter is an anti-Semite, Maathai thinks that AIDS was created in the West to kill black people, the IAEA useless and ElBaradei a moral idiot who thinks Israel the greatest threat to peace, the IPCC is a political outfit and Al Gore a nut who rants that “the earth has a fever.”
No one in their right mind would want to be in the company of these losers.
Interesting you left war criminal H Kissinger off your list. Partisan much?