Obama the impotent

As more than eight months of Barack Obama’s presidency have passed, The Guardian’s Steven Hill surely speaks for much of Europe’s left of center in labeling The One as “inpotent.” In a Europe more secular than America, I guess the tune “Kumbaya” isn’t recognized. And, in a Europe where parliamentary (or quasi-parliamentary, in France’s case) political systems drive real party differences, the strategy of Kumbaya isn’t recognized, either.

The impotence isn’t just on national healthcare. It’s on financial regulation, that remains more embryonic than Obama’s healthcare policy. It’s climate change legislation that itself could legitimately been pushed through the Senate by the reconciliation process, but wasn’t.

Who can blame the European left for seeing Obama as impotent, even as self-emasculating?

That’s especially true when, beyond national healthcare systems already in place, on new issues such as financial regulation, Europe has answers already ready to offer, as Hill’s column documents, and on both right and left, has taken a stronger stance on global warming.

After questioning just how much, or little, bloodied, Obama really is as a politician, Hill — probably representing a large chunk of European intelligentsia on both sides of the aisle — blames the quasi-undemocratic American political system — and rightly so.