A Day in Paradise

Some deep words from Nobel Prize winning economist

The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason. He won his presidency not as a black American but as a reasoning American who happens to be black. America needs a change from the reign of "obtruding false rules pranked in reason’s garb" — to use John Milton’s words. Attacking Iraq for an imagined link with 9/11 was daft. Having unaffordable health care is not a reasonable way to run a rich society. Destroying the environment is not smart. Spreading the wealth a bit in a deeply unequal society is not as offensive to reason as it appeared to Joe the noncertified Plumber.

it’s great to see that Joe the Plumber has gathered a fan club as far away as India.

Reasoning also demands re-examination. Obama has to reassess whether he has got the right balance in policies on trade. On Afghanistan, he must examine how to balance his military toughness with the building of social infrastructure there and finding ways and means of getting Pakistan’s energetic — and largely secular — civil society on his side, not against him. Obama may have to reassess some of his campaign rhetoric while firmly retaining his largehearted reasonableness.

Josef Joffe is not as gracious & a bit skeptical.

Up to 8 out of 10 West Europeans would have voted for Obama, which points to a religious rather than political phenomenon. The way they see it, George W. Bush is a one-man axis of evil, and Obama the redeemer: "Deliver us, for thine is the kingdom . . ." Europeans want to love America again, and they imagine that a simple act of exorcism (called "elections") will rid them of the curse. But politics is not about redemption. Obama is not what West Europeans dream he is: polite, social-democratic and pacific. In other words, more European than American. Will the Euroswooners still love Obama when he presses them for more troops in Afghanistan and real sanctions on Iran?