The World Will Hate Us Even With Obama

One of the more annoying arguments for voting for Barack Obama was that the rest of the world would like us better. This was always a lot of hooey, because no matter who has been president, the world despises us. Regardless of our foreign policy, the rest of the world dislikes us because of our power and influence, two things Americans shouldn't be so willing to give up easily. But don't believe me, read this.

One hates to spoil a good party, but here's a bet that's far safer these days than a U.S. Treasury bill: Even with Obama at the White House, they won't really like us any more than before.

It's not because America's not a special country, a City upon a Hill, from the Pilgrims to Obama, the Blagojevich couple and other American horrors notwithstanding. It's because it is. And as ever, our earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness--not to mention its reality in and of itself--is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism.

The past few years for sure were especially happy ones for the flag burners, intellectual bomb throwers and suicide attackers. George W. Bush gave this crowd a great excuse to hate America--and the Democrats a highly effective partisan political weapon against the ruling party.

At home, Bush played well into the favored narrative of an America Lost. Namely, that this administration squandered all that good will overseas we earned after 9/11. But remember how the good will was earned, and from whom. Everyone loves to cite Le Monde's opening editorial line that day, "Today we're all Americans!" I was in Paris that day. Here's what I read: "Today, when that arrogant colossus across the sea lies prostrate and bloodied and humbled, we're all Americans, but let them stay down or ..."

They like us when we are weak, not strong.