For the last six years the position of leader of the free world has remained open.Jacques Chirac, in 1995:
The position of leader of the free world is vacant.(Prompted by this post, at Harry's Place.)
Further thoughts pertaining to Mr. Obama's unfortunate deficiency here, from Hans Magnus Enzenzsberger's 1997 essay entitled "My Fifty-year Effort to Discover America," which can also be found in Zig Zag:
On the face of it, American culture held its sway. Every single fad or fashion originating in California, Texas, or New York was devoutly aped in Germany. Our media, our advertising, our management continued to speak their rather barbarous brand of airport English, much of it quite incomprehensible to the population at large. On a deeper level, however, one could sense a widening gap between Europe and the USA, a slow but inexorable displacement not visible to the naked eye, rather like the shift of tectonic plates in geological time.There's also this tidbit, from the hit-and-missy Bruce Bawer:
The first symptoms made themselves felt in foreign policy. The American people and their representatives began to get fed up with the endless squabbles of the outside world, not only in Asia and Africa, but also in Europe. Why couldn’t the French and the British, The Italians and Germans take care of the Yugoslavian maze? It was, after all, their own backyard. The United States had very obvious and pressing problems of their own. Why should they send their boys to all sorts of foreign places with unpronounceable names which the average citizen could not even find on their map? To be the only world power was not fun, and to police the entire globe was a nuisance. Let the bastards out there sort out their own mess! Let them fend for themselves! Let us get back to our own agenda and worry about our black people, our immigrants, our poor, our health and education system. I must say that I cannot blame the American people for coming to such conclusions.
Nor were these sentiments purely a matter of foreign policy. I found that Americans had lost much of their interest in the outside world. Unless something very juicy happened, the networks could not be bothered with news from abroad. Foreign languages, never a strong side of American education, were on their way out.
Publishers lost interest in translation. Out of thirty best-sellers listed by the New York Times, twenty-nine are written by Americans, and the only odd man out is British. This is a record of ignorance not matched by any other nation.
Appearances to the contrary, the continental shift is to some extent reciprocal. It is true that American films, American music, and American technology continue to flood the world market. But at the same time, people overseas begin to revert to their own preoccupations. The old lure of America is not what it used to be. There is something jaded about the tourist or businessman who catches the transatlantic plane with a night out, a deal or a shopping spree in mind. It is as if we had seen it all on television. This noncommittal air on both sides, a familiarity bordering on indifference, is not, of course, specific to German-American relations. It has to be seen in a wider context, as a developing rift between America and the outside world…
Another illuminating statistic: contrary to the notion that anti-Americanism is a reflection of opposition to Republican presidents and U.S.-led wars, French sympathy for the U.S. stood at 54% in 1988, during the Reagan administration, but dropped to 35% by 1996, when Clinton was in office. Why the decline? Simple: in 1988 the U.S. was a protector; in 1996, after the Berlin Wall fell, it was a resented “hyperpower” (to employ French politician Hubert Védrine’s gratuitous term).Our question: why can't there be just one political figure in America, just one, who's got an adequate grasp of the political world as a whole and articulates it in clear public view?
