Opinion: A foreigner’s view of Obama’s first year as President

That live blog was extraordinary. I can still remember the stunned silence on the Internet when the result was announced. The crash had just started, the financial markets were in free fall, and even after all the turmoil, people were still able to be silent. Obama’s first year has been a true change of seasons. The expectations were so high. I think it’s appropriate to use this date as the measure of the expectations and the results. One thing that’s definitely changed for the better, or at least saner, is the American political culture; the hopelessly polarized culture has gone, and the world is feeling a lot better about a rational America which knows which century it’s living in, even if some in the U.S. apparently still aren’t too sure. It’s not often, historically, that you see total illiterates and macro-bots as political voices in the US. Ignoramuses, bores and boors, yes, but not the absolutely perverted species of nobodies that era produced. That phase apparently ended when the money ran out. Not much of a loss. You’d have thought the rage would have been maintained a bit better, even by the despicable, obscene political whores which spewed out of every media orifice until the day after the election. Ah well, nothing like sincerity, is there? By the way, I’m not excluding the extremely disingenuous “left” from this description, even if this would appear to be an anti-Right tirade. Introducing a stream of no-hope/certain veto bills into Congress isn’t my idea of sincerity, either. Particularly when nobody could even be bothered to approve US government payroll appropriations for months on end. For us foreigners, Obama’s first year has been reassuring, and if miracles are surprisingly few, the general tone of the U.S. is looking a lot more familiar. A plausible America, battling its usual supply of well-heeled freeloaders (the Robber Barons were much the same) and various shades of criminals, is infinitely better than an insane America lost in various forms of absurd self-righteousness on the subject of obsolete, irrelevant ideologies of whatever persuasion. Nobody ever quite believed that image, a testimony to the enduring goodwill America has retained despite its bizarre, noisily useless aberrations of recent times. Observed phenomena of Obama’s first year: Diplomacy The unilateralism is gone, and good riddance. If the fury was understandable, the policies were an impossible mess, even for America’s supporters. The steady repositioning of American policies regarding the traditional deathtraps like Middle East Peace and anti- Russian/Chinese rhetoric which achieved a resounding zero is also a welcome change. The previous administration, despite having the highly respected Colin Powell and the practical, hardheaded Condoleezza Rice as pack mules and mouthpieces, never seemed to be able to make much headway. Pro-U.S. foreigners sometimes despair that any American administration will ever recognize the pure cynicism and corruption of these “causes.” The Obama administration is looking a lot tougher and harder to convince than previous administrations, GOP or Democrat, on these issues. The environment Apparently if you elect someone who knows what an environment is, and can spell it, you get a policy or several and even some actual results, like Cash For Clunkers. The U.S. is at least a decade behind the rest of the world in basic environmental policy, but that appears to be changing. It's also less embarrassing to be pro-American. It’d be hard to put into words the impact of “Drill Baby Drill” on foreign psyches. From the point of view of the rest of the Western world, it’s not just the fuels that are fossils. It’s the technology. It sounded like “Bring back the dinosaurs”. World leadership This administration hasn’t yet used the phrase “world’s only superpower.” That uniquely effective method of treading on every toe on the planet has apparently fallen out of favor. We could be thankful that the Bush family aren’t exactly extroverts, despite the carefully ironed flat feet of some of their “supporters” in foreign affairs. I happened to notice that things started going bad the minute that phrase was used. America is no longer acting like a diplomatic neophyte. Clinton’s contribution, to date, has been to add an irrefutable tone of Major League to U.S. diplomatic efforts, pretty much on personality alone. Rice and Powell tried hard, but Clinton is a class act in her own right, a hard case, and a political realist, and the world knows it. She’s the Secretary of State a good PR firm would hire, and credible to the bone. The effort with the Russians to start phasing out the ancient nukes is also looking very positive, a real success after a very dry patch in US/Russian relations. At least the subject’s under discussion again. The ridiculous Missile Shield project, shelved as it should have been years ago, has also been removed from the deck. The war in Afghanistan The Obama administration has managed to get itself focused and to show some useful restraint. There is such a thing as being Gung Ho to the point where you can neither Gung nor assume there’s a Ho with whom to Gung. (“Gung Ho” actually means “work together” in Chinese, and to hell with the other meanings of “Ho”.) This cooler approach is likely to send a few shivers through some of America’s more “flexible” allies in the region, and perhaps even produce more sanity than greed, for once. It’s an interestingly consistent fact that America’s less erstwhile allies seem to be able to tell the time when support is withheld. The New York Times is currently running a one word contribution about how people feel about the first year of the Obama administration. It’s worth a look, see what you think.