On the diplomatic front, I think Obama’s record is mixed. You are absolutely right when you say that he has not been able to do what his predecessors also were unable to do, namely make progress with North Korea and Iran. He’s only ten months into his job, but so far no progress has been made.

On the other hand, I think he Obama administration has made some significant progress in “resetting” our relationship with Russia, and we are on much better terms with countries in Western Europe. Most importantly, Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world has been profoundly.

To be sure, a lot of Obama’s success so far has to do with the fact that he is not George W. Bush, but if that’s an asset he can use to make the world a safer place, I say more power to him.

Regarding the President’s safety, I agree that the left said some nasty stuff about Bush the Younger, but I don’t think I’m just making excuses for my fellow lefties when I say that Obama’s detractors have taken it to a much higher level. And I should know, because I was around a lot of people who had VERY low opinions of the Bush administration. I read a lot of way off the scale left-wingnut literature, and you didn’t have the racism, you didn’t have the comparisons to Hitler, you didn’t have the anything that compares to the weirdness of Obama’s birth certificate. No one took a poll on Facebook, asking if Bush should be assassinated, and you didn’t have lefties carrying loaded guns to events where the President was scheduled to speak. Bottom line: during the Bush years people like me said awful stuff about W. We slandered him. We refused to hear anything good about the man. But the things we said didn’t have the potential to provoke anger in the way that Obama’s detractor’s statements do.

At least that’s how it looks from here…

First, I don’t expect much but frustration to come from Obama’s diplomatic efforts. Real diplomacy requires good faith on the part of all parties, and such will not be forthcoming from the thugs his administration has to deal with. For instance, in spite of seeming breakthroughs by the Clinton and Bush administrations, North Korea and its Dear Leader have reneged on every single agreement. We can expect the Iranians to talk and talk and talk while they continue to pursue nuclear weapons; given the Iranian leadership’s holocaust denial and threats to wipe Israel off the map, that situation grows scarier by the day.

Next, while many on the left have sounded cautionary notes about threats against the President, that same contingent was remarkably silent when unconscionable nastiness was hurled at the last administration. Those who called for the scalp of some back-bencher who shouted, “You lie!” during Obama’s address to the joint session are literally the same people who booed Bush during a State of the Union address. Count me as one conservative who remains perpetually appalled at the utterly coarse state of public discourse these days — whether from partisan pols who ought to know better, the rabid talk radio right (and sometimes, left), or a nighttime TV talk show host with the personal morals of a stoat who thinks it funny to make salacious remarks about Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter.

And so it goes.

And your friend in Canada is not alone in his beliefs. A lot of us fear for our president because his detractors don’t just dislike him, they think he’s the Antichrist or they think he’s Hitler. There is some really valid concern that someone might try to assassinate the president, especially when people are showing up armed to anti-Obama rallies. The author Frank Schaeffer (who, I’m proud to say, has written the foreword to my forthcoming book) has written eloquently on this point.

Linda, thanks for reading! When I was a kid a guy named Hugh Penniston, a former pastor of your church, was interim pastor at my home church. I’ve never actually eaten lutefisk, but I’m sure loganberries are better. Someday I’d like to try both färsköl and juleøl to see which is better.

Cheers,

Ben

Bampottery!

“Maybe an American President doing nothing counts as making the world safer?”

I appreciate your keen sense of history and your ability to
make your point on how appropriate it was for President
Obama to be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m
sure he and his team will double their effort to bring people to the peace table throughout our troubled world.

Judy

I’m wondering if there are any good Norwegian hymns we can sing in church…