Burning Lemons

A few minutes ago Barack Obama (The Democratic Presumptive candidate for President, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year) finished the keynote speech of his European tour in Berlin.

His speech has evoked the most positive reaction for a US politician since at least Bill Clinton and possibly JFK. Pro-American feeling hasn’t been so high since the days following 9/11.

So what does Obama offer that McCain doesn’t, well the message of change has gone down particularly well amongst the ranks of “Anyone but Bush” people in Europe he seems to offer a fresh take on US foreign policy after what they see as the particularly gung-ho tactics employed by George W Bush.

That said however Obama still doesn’t go as far as many people would like, his policy for Iraq withdrawal is not fast enough for some and others don’t like his focus upon Afghanistan.

I will write more on this in the coming day’s as Obama continues his European tour with further stops in Paris and London.]

Hurrah! It’s time for another primary which means CNNi gets to take away CNN Today and provide us with wonderful election night ‘alternatives’ such as Lou Dobbs Tonight (seriously who the hell is that guy and why does he have a TV show). Then we will have the ‘best political team in the business’ spending 4 hours telling us what a great political team they are and occasionally mentioning the voting thing that seems to be happening in Florida right now. On the other hand Al Jazeera may send Dave Marish to stand in a room and tell me nothing I don’t know. The BBC will send Katty Kay out in snowboots to talk to some old Nixon Republican and a desperate Edwards supporter and France 24 will desperately try to scrape together enough euros to afford a flight to Florida.

 OK I guess this is the point where I give you my view on the whole thing, I was kind of ok with Guliani until I read an article in Vanity Fair (I know, I know) about his sleazy business links and that put me right off him so I now don’t even have a ‘least worst’ option for them. For the Dems (even though tonight doesn’t count for reasons I don’t understand) Obama seems the best bet but anyone who isn’t Clinton will do.  

Update: The Primary has been and gone and the projected results have been borne out. What worries me though is how well Clinton did once we finally got to a big state. It will be interesting to see if similar results come on Super Tuesday.