Obama's bitchslap
Feb. 15th, 2007 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Before I forget, I wanted to take a moment to admire Barack Obama's slapdown of the Australian PM, John Howard. In case you somehow missed it, Howard said in an interview that he thought Al Qaeda would be thrilled to see Obama or any other cut-and-run Democrat win the next US presidential election. Obama replied by saying that if Howard was so eager for the fight in Iraq, he might think about sending 20,000 more Australian troops to supplement the token 1400 he's committed so far. (Just how many Australian casualties have there been in Iraq, anyway?)
I haven't been able to tell how much hay the opposition leader in Australia, Kevin Rudd, has made of this exchange (I don't read the the Australian news every day), but he certainly seems to be playing it smart. He has argued that Howard is mismanaging the relationship with the US by tying himself too closely to Bush and the Republican party. Rudd has portrayed himself as someone who would be able to work well with any American administration. My impression is that Howard has been made to look like an idiot within Australia as well as to the outside world. And while Obama didn't deliver his rebuke very smoothly in the actual press conference, the substance of it was right on the mark. Well played!
I haven't been able to tell how much hay the opposition leader in Australia, Kevin Rudd, has made of this exchange (I don't read the the Australian news every day), but he certainly seems to be playing it smart. He has argued that Howard is mismanaging the relationship with the US by tying himself too closely to Bush and the Republican party. Rudd has portrayed himself as someone who would be able to work well with any American administration. My impression is that Howard has been made to look like an idiot within Australia as well as to the outside world. And while Obama didn't deliver his rebuke very smoothly in the actual press conference, the substance of it was right on the mark. Well played!
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Date: 2007-02-17 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 05:17 pm (UTC)