Perhaps even more than within this country, the Obama presidency has been a profound disappointment to people around the world. For Switzerland’s L’Hebdo, columnist Charles Poncet registers his sense of how badly things have gone since Obama took office, punctuating no less than four paragraphs by ending them with the word ‘disgrace.’
For L’Hebdo, Charles Poncet writes in part:
To see the great American democracy, so badly damaged since the attacks of September 11, 2001, elect as its head a representative of an ethnic minority, was in itself a promise of a brighter tomorrow. Obama appeared to be liberal: torture, Guantanamo, the obsession with security, the shameful methods of Dick Cheney, would soon be no more than a sad memory.
What disappointment awaited such liberal hopes! Guantanamo was not closed. It appears that in passing, Obama mentioned in his speech that it could be this year. For a promise made five years ago, this is hardly brilliant. The America of the Fifth Amendment – that of Miranda v. Arizona (“you have the right to remain silent, anything that you say can and will be used against you”), continues to torment prisoners who don’t know why they were imprisoned and have no right to habeas corpus. An absolute disgrace.
Reduced to ranting about the middle class, as he did the other day, he is committed to “defending” them – with his eye on this autumn’s elections. He has lost sight of the fact that no one gives the slightest credence to anything he says.
Barack Obama has been the president of unfulfilled hope.
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