Is Obama a Socialist?

[gagged_Louise]

gagged_louise, I can see that you have one hell of a chip on your shoulder and it is for that reason i will not reply to drivel. In three posts you have said nothing about the Socialist tendencies of President Obama, all you have done is used the thread as a platform to run down England and the rest of Europe....

I wasn't even discussing England in the first post,just noting that Britain has *not* been an exception to the way other ancient European great powers have acted - and I only took it up later because you swerved the discussion on to UK leadership and England's wars. But I can see you have a considerably more imperial vision of Britain, even in the 21st century, than what most people have today. Fine. I was discussing political communication and people's ideas of how a president or a prime minister should - or even *can* - communicate in public with the leading people of other independent nations. No, I'm not American, buit it's obvious to anyone that the expectations of how a national front man should talk and act are different between many U.S. Americans - let's say, Middle Americans, especially, plus the neo-cons -and a majority of Western Europeans. Both the people, the media and the political class themselves, by the way.

And that's coloured by the fact that America has traditionally been more free to do as she pleases without anyone nearby bumping back into her with equal force. I'm not moralizing, just pointing out a fact. I think Obama recognizes this difference , just like JFK and Jimmy Carter did, so his style of talking to other nations appears more European, more diplomatic. And if one is used to a John Wayne style of communication - "smoke 'em out", "We're gonna chase down that mad dog" or flatly declaring that this shit ain't worth the paper it's written on - then maybe it will appear confusing but that's not his problem.