Wednesday, September 28, 2011

More 'smart diplomacy'

It isn't just the German finance minister who is annoyed about being lectured to by our President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner.  Our leaders have united the German left and right in scorning the advice of our own profligate and financially incompetent administration.

From the center:
The president's scolding is a pathetic attempt to distract attention from his own failures. How embarrassing.
From the right:
Dark clouds have gathered over the American president. The gloomy state of the economy is putting a dampener on Obama's future prospects. The optimism of the past is gone, replaced by a cheap search for a scapegoat.
That's not how friends talk to each other. That applies particularly to friends who have themselves failed to get a handle on their own, self-made crisis. ... In the desperate battle for his re-election he'd rather construct myths, such as claiming that the Europeans alone are responsible for the American mess. Not only is this fundamentally wrong, but -- coming as it does from a friend -- it's downright pitiful and sad.
From the left: 
One needs to remember the context within which Obama's scolding of the Europeans took place. It was an event where the president was raising money for the Democrats and where he wanted to explain to voters why the US economy is much worse off than he and his economic experts had believed until recently. Hence his criticism of the EU was simple electioneering.