European Schadenfreude

TW: I am not a fan of chest-thumping Americans. Chest-thumpers are insecure. I am, however, a nationalist. I like it when our friends and enemies are worried about US hyper-power. I would just walk softly with it while appreciating the big stick. In other words the opposite of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and even at times John McCain.

It is time for a change, and thumping our chests harder is not the answer. Yes the world is not all about fighting "terror", the US needs to lessen the focus on its own navel and evolve our policies as world wealth and power dis aggregates across the world. Certainly the US must get its economic house back in order as the financial problems are not merely a "Wall Street" problem but a "Main Street" problem fueled by too much debt and too little savings.

Many of us have been embarrassed by our country's policies but not our country over the past eight years sometimes this differentiation is lost in translation. But what will happen when we are no longer embarrassed but looking for aggressive partners in place of snarkers.

The schadenfreude emerging from Europe and elsewhere relative to the US' latest crises is annoying, if expected and even understandable. If Rush Limbaugh were to comment on the attached article, he would inevitably rant for three hours about those bastard Europeans. I say lets get our act together first.

If Barack Obama becomes POTUS things will have to change on the Europeans end as well. To a certain degree they have received a pass. Due to the increasingly universal derision associated with Bush they have been able to snipe endlessly about Bush and American policies generally without offering much in the way of alternatives. Come February 2009 much will be expected not only from the US in re-building its image and policies but it will also be time for the Europeans to leave the snark behind. They will need to figure out whether they want to merely recede like meek puppies in the face of the Putin's and Taliban's of the world or engage fully alongside in the US in attacking the political, military and economic challenges we all face.

From Der Spiegel (the major German news magazine)
"George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly..."Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN...the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

And now, of all times, the world is faced with a preeminent power that no longer seems capable of leading and a US president who is not even able to unite his divided country in an hour of need...A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.
Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

For far too long, the Americans and the British made fun of the Germans for their risk-averse, savings-oriented mentality, says Bernd Pfaffenbach, Merkel's chief negotiator on foreign trade issues. But now the relative conservatism that Germans have shown in financial matters is paying off. "One can see that we are on a more solid base," says Pfaffenbach, who refers to the crisis as a 'purifying storm...'

...In the past, the US government's solo efforts provided the Europeans with an all-too-comfortable excuse for simply doing nothing. But that excuse is no longer valid."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-581502,00.html