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dogriverI don't understand the international community's having gone gaga over US President Obama. The feeling of many people around the world is that Mr. Obama is going to create some kind of new openness and warm-and-fuzzy open-house policy for the United States that did not exist before.
Yet one of President Obama's first acts was to institute protectionist measures. Had it not been for Republican intervention, there would have been nothing in those measures to protect existing trade agreements with other countries. While I'm all for keeping jobs at home where feasible, as a citizen of the United States's largest trading partner, it seems to me that the risk of xenophobia is a real one, and anyone expecting a warm-and-fuzzy open door policy needs to wake up and smell the incense.
Mr. Obama is clearly a very intelligent, extremely articulate, charismatic, and no doubt a very nice man. But a lot of people are expecting a utopia under his presidency. I was no fan of Bush either, but I'm not naïve enough to expect what every indicator tells me not to expect.
Yet one of President Obama's first acts was to institute protectionist measures. Had it not been for Republican intervention, there would have been nothing in those measures to protect existing trade agreements with other countries. While I'm all for keeping jobs at home where feasible, as a citizen of the United States's largest trading partner, it seems to me that the risk of xenophobia is a real one, and anyone expecting a warm-and-fuzzy open door policy needs to wake up and smell the incense.
Mr. Obama is clearly a very intelligent, extremely articulate, charismatic, and no doubt a very nice man. But a lot of people are expecting a utopia under his presidency. I was no fan of Bush either, but I'm not naïve enough to expect what every indicator tells me not to expect.
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Date: 2009-03-30 06:34 pm (UTC)I do not expect a utopia, not just because I don't put Obama on a pedestal, but because a utopia just isn't possible. The U.S. condition, indeed, the world condition, just won't allow for the types of sweeping changes people would like Obama to make.
However, President Obama has already made many changes that fill me with relief, and he's a whole lot better than what we had before. He can actually speak in sentences, even paragraphs! It's really amazing.
BEfore the election, I told my husband that if Mr. Obama did half of what he had promised to do, this country would be better.
As to trade agreements, I'm still not sure how I feel about this. As a proponent of the buy-local, eat-local, use-local movements I'm happy to see President Obama pushing for american made goods; the economy sure needs some stimulating. However, the import-export business was around long before the 20th and 21st centuries and we can't expect goods and services to exist in a vacuum of arbitrarily determined geographic lines.
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Date: 2009-03-30 06:44 pm (UTC)