The Europeans and others aren’t as enamored with the president as they were a year ago, before they had to actually deal with him:
Together with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leaders of Russia, Brazil, Japan, the European Union and of other important countries, Obama went to work. But it did not go quite as the Nobel Peace Prize-winner had imagined. Only Norbert Röttgen, Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety remained optimistic. In spite of the tough negotiations, a compromise can be found, he said. “Today the die will be cast.”
Instead a fiasco had begun making itself visible and felt. It began during the night of Friday and Saturday. A small group of negotiators assembled from among the 30 important and representative countries, among them Germany, were still discussing the main features and principles to be included in a twelve-point document. It was titled “The Copenhagen Accord” and consisted of a three-page collection of vague aims, without specific legally-binding goals that were to be achieved.
Although China is among the worst climate polluters and has had a long ascent in becoming an industrial power deserving of respect and recognition, Premier Wen Jiabao was not among the participants in the talks-not that his participation was not desired. To the contrary!
According to rumors in the Bella Center, US President Barack Obama at about 11 PM, had impatiently asked to speak with Wen Jiabao in order to advance the discussion. But Obama had to wait. Wen, who, it was rumored, had rarely left his hotel room, could not be found. Finally, the US delegation located him in a room set aside for negotiations. A visibly furious Obama, according to reports, stormed into the room. “Are you now ready to talk with me, Premier Wen?” he was reported to have shouted. “Are you now ready? Premier Wen, are you now ready to talk with me?” What a scene for a US president.
Wen was not alone in the room at the time when Obama quite literally burst into the room, according to participants. At the time, the Premier was in a conversation with India’s head of state, Mammohan Singh and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. Suddenly the group saw itself forced into a conversation with the US president.
At the insistence of the impatient Obama, this unplanned and coincidentally-assembled negotiating round and participants, agreed on a minimal compromise.
Obama should have discussed, coordinated with and agreed to this compromise with his closest partners: the European Union or the G77 Developing Nations. Instead, at about 10:25 PM, he called together a number of American journalists for an impromptu press conference. There he announced, the “Copenhagen Accord” as the conclusion and product of the two-week long conference. He was aware, that many countries would consider the result as insufficient and unsatisfactory. More, however, was not achievable.
He thought it a significant achievement and milestone that large developing countries like India and China had, for the first time, recognized the necessity of reducing emissions and accepted to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
With that, he packed his bags and flew home.
I suspect they’ll be happy if he stays there.
Something tells me items like this will see brisk sales in the next three years.
You posted an article a week ago bitching that he wasn’t forceful enough in getting a deal. Now he’s forceful and you’re upset. Not that you would be happy with any climate deal that didn’t address The Coming Ice Age.
Admit it – there is no way this President could possibly please you.
Admit it – there is no way this President could possibly please you.
There are many ways he could please me, or rather, there are things that a president could do to please me, but he’s apparently incapable of doing them. For instance, he could have stayed away entirely. I would have been thrilled with that. Though, actually, I am pleased by his Kyopenhagen performance, seeing how well it came out (a meaningless resolution). I doubt if he’s pleased, though.
Anyway, the issue isn’t whether or not he pleases me, but whether or not he’s living up the stratospheric expectations of the rubes who voted for him, and didn’t (as I did) see through him from the beginning.
The stratospheric expectations exist primarily in your own mind. Most of us realize that Obama is merely a center-left politician.
The stratospheric expectations exist primarily in your own mind.
You’re hilarious, if only inadvertently.
“Obama’s gonna fill my gas tank!” “Obama’s gonna pay my mortgage!” “Obama’s gonna lower the oceans!” “Obama’s going to bring forth a new, post-racial, post-partisan America. Why he even reads Nietzsche and Niebuhr! We’re saved!”
JP Gibb, what worries me even more is that during a Palin (or Huckabee) administration, we’d see bumper stickers like that with Obama’s face on them.
From “History of the Twenty-First Century” (Wu-Vargas Books, Shanghai & Rio, 2125):
The USA entered the new millenium in a condition of unprecedented power, prosperity, and prestige. She was positioned to lead the world into another American Century. Few suspected that the skill and discipline to wield the power and maintain the prosperity had vanished.
During the 2000 campaign, the two presidential contenders referred to the nation’s recent budget surplus as a permanent fixture. George W. Bush emerged as the first in a series of feckless leaders, each worse than the preceding one, who brought about a tragic result that was trivially avoidable in principle. In actuality, given the quality of the political class & other elites and the disposition of the electorate, probably no politician who spoke and governed responsibly could have attained national office.
(May it not turn out so. If it does, who will create the Foundation?)
You posted an article a week ago bitching that he wasn’t forceful enough in getting a deal
If Rand made that observation, Chris, then I expect the subtext was that Obama would be forceful and competent. The complaint here is not that he’s not forceful, but that he’s a narcissist idiot.
Admit it – there is no way this President could possibly please you.
Well, he’s pleasing me all the time. He is destroying the credibility of socialist multiculti “green” thinking faster than anything else imaginable could have done. He’s done more to burnish the credentials and respectability of conservatism than any President since Reagan.
Here we thought he just gets testy when eating his waffles.
With that, he packed his bags and flew home.
He had to hurry back home before 15 to 20 inches of global warming shut down the east coast.
Which is what the other leaders he was talking too most likely knew. They just pursed their lips and gently smiled as they nodded along with The One’s sage advice. Then, when he walked off they went back to talking about whatever it was beforehand.
I was about to add to Josh’s scenario by saying, “At least they didn’t pat him on the head before he left.”
Then I remembered: Nobel Peace Prize.
The Eurotrash and American Lefties finally got the leftist, trashy President they spent the last decade longing for…
It’s too bad they can’t be allowed to choke on their wonderboy in peace, without trashing the United States along with.