Exactly Opposite
Did you notice this disclaimer:
Look, Mr. Obama’s skin color is a bad reason to vote for him or against him. Substance should always trump symbolism.
Yet, despite that brief head nod to logic and reason, that is exactly what the whole piece is about!
He offers Asians, Africans, Europeans and Jamaican comments at the improbability of us electing an African-American President and then proceeds to suggest that it is Obama's ethnicity that will restore America to stability, leadership, respect and peace in the world. It is simply his blackness that will do that!
No matter how you spin that assumption it comes out short of reasonable.
First, let's acknowledge that it really shouldn't matter what the rest of the world thinks of us. It is nice to be loved, but better to be respected. It's good to be liked, but better to be the source of aspiration. Africa and Jamaica are cesspools of political and economic disaster. They don't have to like us. Better they should envy as and try to emulate our past. Europe is inexorably sliding into socialism and politically correct follies without realizing that their embrace of liberalism is destroying the very foundations of European greatness. China might be an economic giant, but Mr. Kristof should realize that probably a billion of those 1.4 billion people don't notice or care who is the President of the US. They are too busy trying to eke out a living. We don't need for them to like us. We need for them to respect us.
True to the credo of the NYT, Mr. Kristof appeals to grand liberal inanities while seeking to justify the emptiness of his thoughts with that short sentence of disclaimer. It doesn't work. It merely highlights the stupidity of the concept.
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