Wednesday, March 19, 2014

I do not understand why Barack Obama personal relations with foreign leaders are so uniformly negative. He is a tremendously empathetic man. He is great one-on-one. When Americans think of Obama the man, they see these images of him:

He turned Chris Frigging Christie from a bullying critic into a friend! He has a gift for this.



You can't fake that! That is who the man is. Extraordinary.
                     

These photographs will live in the annals of American presidential politics.

And then there's this:

                                                       

And this:

This isn't the best photo of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's reaction when Obama came bounding up the steps at Nelson Mandela's funeral to great her and Raul Castro but you can see she is not happy. When Obama started up, Rousseff threw up a cold, almost hateful look. Obama seemed oblivious like, "You still mad at me?" Damn straight she's still mad at you, hoss. Bugging her phone is insulting, a betrayal. He doesn't get along with foreign leaders even when it should be obvious to a moron why some foreign leader would want to stick needles in his eyes. He generally acted like an oblivious less-than-grown-up at Mandela's funeral.

Mystifying. Such a connection with Americans; like oil and water with foreign leaders.