Watching the way world leaders greeted Barack Obama on his world tour last week, one could be forgiven the impression that he was already president of the United States.
There’s no denying that the political atmospherics of his tour, which had leaders in the Middle East treating Obama like a president and people in Berlin greeting him like a savior, made McCain jealous. And his jealousy must have only intensified when the courting of Obama reached a climax in France, where President Sarkozy was anxiously awaiting his arrival like a high-school nerd who scored a date with the homecoming queen. Though, perishing the thought of being shunned, British PM Gordon Brown made quite a public show of waiting with bated breath for his quickie as a thoroughly exhausted Obama paid a courtesy call at No. 10 in London … on his way back to America.
In fact, such was the political rapture that accompanied his every visit that John McCain’s lament that Obama was acting like the “president of the world” had some resonance.
To be fair, however, Obama cannot be blamed for the tag of inevitability others have stamped upon his candidacy. Yet it behooves him to utterly shun their presumptions, which have him not only winning the election by a landslide but also saving the world like a black Messiah.
After all, Hillary Clinton bought into similar hype about her inevitability as the Democratic nominee, and look how inevitable that turned out to be….
So beware Barack, don’t believe the hype!
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Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.HaroldS.GeneenHarold S. Geneen