What If There Had Been No President Obama?

Where BP was concerned, things would have been no different. Obama is no more anti-British than every other President of the United States, past or future. Or, to put it the other way, every other President of the United States, past or future, was or will be no more pro-British than Obama. Who do you think that the first one was? And since when was the President of the United States paid to be pro-British?

The attraction of Obama has always been, not the man himself, but his supporters: Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bart Stupak, Jim Jones, Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel, Squire Lance, Christopher Buckley, Douglas Kmiec, Donnie McClurkin, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in California and Florida to re-affirm traditional marriage, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Colorado to end legal discrimination against working-class white men, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Missouri and Ohio not to liberalise gambling, and those who voted for Obama from coast to coast while also keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going.

Obama has signed healthcare into law after having promised not to do so if there were any provision for federally funded abortion, which there is not; would that there were a public option of a single-payer system alongside that ban, so as to make abortion practically impossible, but one thing at a time. Nor is their coverage for illegal immigrants, still less the amnesty being promoted by Senate Republicans. Traditional marriage is Obama's own stated view. He has kicked the Freedom of Choice Act into the long grass, and instead endorsed Casey's Pregnant Women Support Act as well as concentrating on the Employee Free Choice Act supported by pro-life stalwarts such as Stupak and Marcy Kaptur, who declined to endorse either Obama or Clinton because neither was offering enough to the victims of the "free" trade agreements that she and Stupak are now prominent in seeking to repeal, not without White House encouragement.

And what was the alternative? The Clintons? I was initially quite warm towards John McCain. Yes, the suggestion that McCain was against abortion was laughable. But a man of McCain's experience, like the decorated Jacques Chirac, struck me as likely to leave the warmongering to such draft dodgers as Bill Clinton and George Bush. However, he then came out as wanting Robert Kagan as Secretary of State and the treasonable Randy Scheunemann as National Security Advisor. With Britain tagging along as ever, that would have meant war against Iran, war against Russia over Georgia, and now war against Turkey and North Korea simultaneously.

Still, a credible primary challenge would be in order, both to keep Obama on his toes and because someone will have to be the nominee in 2016. Marcy Kaptur would be good: a pro-life battler and a Progressive Caucus member. A pro-life woman seeking the Democratic nomination has happened before. But never on a full platform of policies. And certainly never from the populist, anti-war Left. One to watch? Watch, and pray. Just don't expect her, or anyone else, to be pro-British. After all, why should they be?