> Maybe it’s hard to see from over here, but notwithstanding the hype around Obamania, and taking into account the low attainment levels of contemporary political leaders, Obama does seem to stand out.
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> Perhaps it is to do with your expectations. I never thought that he was left-wing, or even radical, but it seems to me that, in the context of these anti-political times, he was a leader of some gravitas, and if he didn’t end the war in Afghanistan, he did in Iraq.
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> Would there have been an Arab spring if Obama had not taken America’s foot off of their necks, and let Egyptians and Tunisians address their needs outside of the hackneyed framework of anti-imperialism? I am not so sure.
I can understand your thinking. I find that the non-U.S. press tends to give a much more left-wing image to Obama than even the mainstream domestic press. I'm not sure why that is. Suffice it to say that while Obama's mild form of disengagement in Iraq is obviously preferable to some imaginary right-wing escape-forward strategy, the war had already reached a level of mass unpopularity by 2007 sufficient to guarantee that almost any president would have followed a policy roughly along Obama's lines. Note that even among the right-wing Republicans, there is almost no praise of military adventures anymore, and lately they've sometimes positioned themselves to Obama's "left" on these issues. On domestic policy, including the (closely related) civil liberties issues, he's been to the right of Bush. The foreign press naturally gives those issues less attention.
SA