America in the World

Obama learns the wrong lesson from Reagan

 In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama paid tribute to Ronald Reagan:

"Ronald Reagan’s efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe."

The Daily Telegraph's Janet Daley takes him to task for those words, finding President Obama guilty of an "extraordinary historical fallacy":

"In fact, it was Ronald Reagan’s escalation of the arms race (through the much derided “star wars” programme) that bankrupted the Soviet Union, brought about the downfall of communism, and truly liberated the peoples of Eastern Europe."

Daley realises that Reagan's message of escalation "would not presumably have appealed much to the Nobel grandees in Oslo" and that is why the strong America of Reagan was not recognised by those grandees but the humble (some might say apologetic) America of Obama was.

America is more resistant to decisive action on climate change than other nations

A global poll of major economies by the BBC finds that the people of the USA are more resistant to action on climate change than most other nations.

Although nearly three-quarters of Americans say climate change is "very serious" (45%) or "somewhat serious" (29%) a large minority (42%) oppose "government investment to address climate change if it hurts the economy". The chart reproduced on the right shows how this level of opposition to government action is larger than any other industrial nation.

Despite this domestic tension Barack Obama is now expected to attend the final stages of the Copenhagen Conference on climate change. Amid reports that more progress is now likely at the international gathering than originally expected, the US President is to switch his attendance from the beginning of the gathering to the end.

FOOTNOTE

The usefulness of the BBC survey has to be doubted. Its finding that just 25% of UK voters oppose "government investment to address climate change" would appear to be encouraging for those environmentalists wanting bold action. But more detailed polling in Britain by leading pollster ICM for The Sunday Telegraph finds much more scepticism:

"Asked if they backed the main conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that humans are largely responsible for modern day rises in temperatures, 52 per cent of [British] voters agreed. However, 39 per cent said climate change had not yet been proven to be man made, while seven per cent simply denied the phenomenon was happening at all. Furthermore, fewer than one in four voters (23 per cent) believed that climate change was "the most serious problem faced by man" – a view endorsed by governments across the world. A clear majority (58 per cent) said it was merely "one of a number of serious problems" while 17 per cent believed it has been exaggerated and is "not a very serious problem.""

More on The Telegraph website.

The BBC's outgoing North America Editor writes a fond farewell to the USA

AmericaInTheWorld.com has featured the writings of the BBC's Justin Webb on a number of occasions.  He also addressed a gathering of journalists, politicians and other opinion formers hosted by AITW.

Mr Webb has now left America and will soon become one of the principal presenters of the BBC's flagship currents affairs programmes; Radio 4's Today programme.

Before he left he wrote a goodbye reflection.  You can read it all here but this was his conclusion:

"I deplore the superstition and the eating competitions and the tatty dreariness of so much of America, and I note that the new president is also unimpressed by the infrastructure and not a fan of fat but, after more than seven years living here, I am increasingly convinced that these elements of the nation are not the flip side of the greatness of America, they are part of that greatness.

There is something about the carelessness of America that gives space for greatness.

Out on route 17 in South Carolina, you can do very well or very badly. You can crash and burn, or you can fill up with cheap petrol and ride off into the sunset. If you do not like yourself in South Carolina, you can hire a self-drive hire truck and take it to Seattle. If you do not like your life and you have drive and luck, you can change it because - being American - you believe you can change it.

Sitting in a dingy apartment in New York watching Perry Mason on the TV, you can decide to make it big in law as eight-year-old Sonia Sotomayor once did.  This summer, now in her fifties, she becomes a Supreme Court justice and the latest American story to send shivers down the spines of dreamers of the American dream.  But if Sonia Sotomayor is to make it big, there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take...

More than 300 million people live here now, settlers from all over the world. From Ho Chi Minh City, from Timbuktu, from Vilnius, from Tehran, from every last corner of the earth, they have made America their home and they are still streaming in.  I feel crazy going back to the old world. My five-year-old daughter Clara, who is the proud owner of an American passport, agrees.  She says she intends to leave home, at around 12-years-old, and return to her native land. I do not blame her.

If you are willing to chance your arm, if you back yourself, if you want to live the life, America is still the place to be. Drive out on Route 17 and take a chance!  So that's it from me, I am checking out. But part of me can never leave…"

More Americans “Pro-Life” than “Pro-Choice” for first time

Barack Obama may have overturned President Bush's abortion-restricting policies but Americans as a whole are becoming more "pro-life" according to a new Gallup survey.  Asked if they are pro-life or pro-choice 51% say the former, 42% the latter. "This is the first time," reports Gallup, "a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995."

76% of Americans still say that abortion should be legal under certain (53%) or all (23%) circumstances but the trend is another example of American exceptionalism.

The Great Recession has not altered America's scepticism about big government

That's the conclusion of David Brooks as he surveys new polling data on American attitudes to their country.

Key quotes:

"In a recent Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans said that big government is the biggest threat to the country. Only 32 percent said big business. Those answers are near historical norms."

"When Gallup asked specifically about the current crisis, 44 percent of Americans said they disapprove of an expanded role for government during the crisis; 39 percent said they approve of an expanded role but want it reduced when the crisis is over; and only 13 percent want to see a permanently expanded role for government."

"When asked by the National Journal group more specifically where good ideas and financial solutions come from, 40 percent said corporate America and 40 percent said government. When asked what could best enhance income security, half of all Americans said it was a matter of individual responsibility, 19 percent said government regulations like increasing the minimum wage were most effective and 15 percent said government programs."

Davcid Brooks' full piece is here.

The end of American exceptionalism?

Peter Wehner of Washington DC's Ethics and Public Policy Center notes two contrasting centre right views on whether the policies of the Obama adminstration threaten 'American exceptionalism'*.

First Charles Murray:

"The advent of the Obama administration brings this question before the nation: Do we want the United States to be like Europe?… the question has suddenly become urgently relevant because President Obama and his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats. There’s nothing sinister about that. They share an intellectually respectable view that Europe’s regulatory and social welfare systems are more progressive than America’s and advocate reforms that would make the American system more like the European system…. There is every reason to believe that when Americans embrace the European model, they begin to behave like Europeans."