"Why Bush has been a liberal's best friend"

Nick Cohen's article in Sunday's Guardian Comment Is Free section is well worth a read as it identifies the "left's" potential problems with having a black liberal American president:

"the liberal-left in Europe and North America has been lucky to have Bush.

By building him up into a great Satan, the oil man who invades countries to seize their reserves and the Christian who orders bloody crusades, they have hidden the totalitarian threats of our age from themselves and anyone who listens to them. Bush allowed them to explain away radical Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy. Even those in the European elites who do not buy the full 'America has it coming' package believe that Bush is a cowboy who doesn't understand that the postmodern way to end conflict is to compromise rather than fight.

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the 'root cause' of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired."

The liberal left in the US and Europe love Barack Obama mostly because he is the anti-Bush and partly because he is black. When/if Barack Obama becomes President and has to make unpopular decisions they will learn to deride him, just as the left in the UK learnt to deride and then hate Tony Blair.

As I said last week, many people have fallen for Barack Obama in the way that many fell for the easy charm and the "pretty straight guy" persona of Tony Blair. I believe that Barack Obama is as straight a politician as Tony Blair was. Just like Blair, Obama wants power and probably also the money and lifestyle that goes with that power. Eventually the penny dropped that Tony Blair was not a "pretty straight guy" and one day the same will happen re Barack Obama. I just hope that America and the world do not have to suffer because the US electorate were taken in by a smooth talking (when on auto-cue) salesman, supported by a star-struck liberal media.