So says Janet Daley of the Telegraph:
The BBC reports of Barack Obama’s speech last night are about as derisive as it would be possible to be about someone you were describing only a few months ago as the incarnation of Hope and Optimism. Yes indeed, the romance is over. The British media have decided that it was all a cruel deception: Obama is just one more ranting populist president who will do anything to divert attention from his own failure to get a grip. And this is not just about BP and the fate of all those pension funds.
“All a cruel deception.” Welcome to reality, British cousins!
Of course it was a cruel deception. The Being There president never had any resume to speak of — other than his own fairy tale, which he spun in Dreams From My Father — had no record of accomplishment in either the private or the public section and, beyond his little party trick of being able to read a teleprompter, had only the most rudimentary political skills. In fact, he had only two things going for him: the ability to serve as an empty vessel into which others could pour their hopes, dreams and aspirations (as Obama himself has admitted) and the services of an adept political operator in David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune city hall reporter/Daley machine hack turned campaign consultant whose media contacts were crucial in establishing the legend of Chauncey Gardiner — er, Barack Obama.
Nor is it simply the demonising of Big Oil – which makes the US president sound as if he were recruiting his speech writers direct from the student union – that has evoked the UK media’s collective sneer. What has been much commented upon – especially by those fastidiously liberal BBC correspondents – is Obama’s pointedly bellicose language: the US is apparently engaged in a “battle” to be waged in very personal, anthropomorphic terms “against an oil spill that is assaulting” its coast. Considering how relentlessly the Bush “war on terror” was ridiculed, how long will it take before the Obama “war on an oil slick” is labelled as absurd? Given the tone of this morning’s coverage, perhaps not very long at all.
An inevitable moment, but nothing to take pleasure in. After all, there are still more than two years to go…
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