Hmm. Maybe Obama Won't Change Global Opinion of the U.S. After All

Perhaps a similar dynamic will evolve globally as well. People around the world who saw Obama’s election as evidence of the real promise of America and as a reason to hope that Bush’s America was an aberration may begin to question these assumptions too. This is partially natural as American foreign policy has always been characterized by more continuity than change between administrations. U.S. interests almost never change substantially when a new president comes to office. People anywhere in the world who expected the Obama administration to abandon long standing alliances, tone down U.S. efforts to combat Jihadist terror or to seek to change the U.S. role in international relations were inevitably going to be disappointed.

Making Job Creation a Priority →

Putting the more than fifteen million unemployed Americans back to work in the midst of an ongoing recession is not an easy task, so faulting the administration for not coming up with a brilliant and politically achievable plan for doing this is a little unfair. Nonetheless, the administration's position on jobs has at times suggested an unexpectedly poor understanding of the impact of the economic downturn on ordinary Americans.

Is Obama About to Make a Disastrous Mistake?

This is one of the reasons why Obama’s views on Afghanistan are so puzzling. Adding troops in Afghanistan to pursue a mission that looks more difficult every day is the perfect recipe for overextending the U.S. and accelerating our declining power and influence, at a time when we cannot afford it. It is a policy that simply does not recognize how the world, and the ability of the U.S. to change the world, has changed. The threat of terrorism is real, but a policy of keeping the U.S. safe from terrorism and expanding the war and rebuilding in Afghanistan are not at all the same thing.

Lincoln Mitchell