A View from Canada - Is Obama America's Gorbachev?

An unusual piece from Canada.

Both men have been praised for their wonderful temperaments, and their ability to remain unperturbed by approaching catastrophe. But again, the substance is different, for Gorbachev's temperament was that of a survivor of many previous catastrophes.

Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern "liberal" mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.

Gorbachev seemed to assume, right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and then beyond it, that his Communist Party would recover from any temporary setbacks, and that the long-term effects of his glasnost and perestroika could only be to make it bigger and stronger.

Read the whole thing. How close does the author come to your own thinking?

Note: VDH is worried about Obama becoming too weak in international relations to be effective. It may be more important now than it was before to support the President when he takes actions with which we can agree. And to kind of nudge him toward actions which we think will be in the country's (and the world's) best interests. Where is Obama's Dick Morris to help him modify the influence of the radicals around him and increase his bipartisan appeal?

UPDATE: Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize, just like President Obama. Instapundit has a worrisome question.

The observations above are consistent with Richard Epstein's observation about Obama when they worked together at the University of Chicago:

. . . he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact upon production. And if you live in that kind of fairyland, which I think he does, every one of your major social and economic initiatives is going to (A) misfire and if they succeed, God forbid, in getting through, they're going to lead to an intensification of the downturn that we've already experienced.

Perhaps President Obama optimistically assumes that the transformative changes he envisions for our government can take place without too much suffering and destruction domestically and without placing too great a burden on future generations. Maybe he really believes that he can insult the leaders of allied nations, one after the other, abrogate agreements for mutual defense, appease dictators, etc. without destabilizing and imperiling world governments which are currently free and democratic. At least, I hope that's what he believes. Otherwise, he is far more radical than most people would want to think.